lew   Vork 

'\  Sj/mohonic  Study 


Ex  ICtbrtB 


SEYMOUR   DURST 


-^  *  'Tort  nieiitv   ^rTt/tercutfn.  o^  <^<?  M^wa-tarks 


When  you  leave,  please  leave  this  hook 

Because  it  has  heen  said 
"Ever'thing  comes  t'  him  who  waits 

Except  a  loaned  hook." 


^C   ^F 


Avery  Architectur.^l  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


NEW  YORK: 

A   SYMPHONIC    STUDY 

In  Three  Parts 


PART  I 
The  Terrestrial  Discord 


PART  II 
The  Celestial  Concord 


PART  III 
The  Discord  vs.  the  Concord 


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New  York: 
A  Symphonic  Study 


In  Three  Parts 


By 
MELUSINA  FAY  PEIRCE 


And  only  the  Master  snail  praise  us,  and  only  the  Master  shall  blame; 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one  shall  work  for  fame; 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  working  and  each  in  his  separate  star 
Shall  draw  the  Thing  as  he  sees  It  for  the  God  of  Things  as  They  Are." 

— Kipling. 


THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

440  FOURTH  AVENUE,  -   NEW  YORK 

MCMXVIII 


HN 

So     V 
P4 


Copyright,  1918,  by 
Melusina  Fay  Peirce 


To 
My  Friend  of  Friends 
because  he  was  the  friend* 
of  this  my  book — its 
pages  are  devotedly  inscribed. 


"  /  do  feel  that  there  is  a  screw  of  such  magnitude  loose 
somewhere  that  the  whole  framework  of  society  is  shaken." 

— Charles  Dickens. 


"Man  has  nothing  but  contempt  for  the  woman.  The 
hatred  of  women  is  an  essential  of  our  modern  heroic 
life."  — Gabrielle  D'annunzio. 


"  There   is  a  rock   on   which  every  human   soul  must 
anchor  or  be  split;  it  is  the  sex  opposite  to  its  own." 

— Frederick  Robertson. 


PART  I 
THE  TERRESTRIAL  DISCORD 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PART  I. 

THE  TERRESTRIAL  DISCORD. 

THE  DEXTERS. 

PAGE 

Prelude   5 

CHAPTER 

I  Mrs.  Dexter  9 

II  "  Poor  Tim "   14 

III  Julia   19 

IV  Mrs.  Dexter's  "  New  Jerusalem  " 25 

V  Fanny  Dexter  ... 35 

VI  A  New  Yorker 43 

VII  His  "Little  Queen"   53 

VIII  A  New  Household  60 

IX  *'  Something  Too  Much  of  This  " 65 

X  Still  "  Excelsior  "  70 

XI  Cheated  Hymen 77 

XII  Wedding  Number  Two  89 

XIII  The  "  Little  Housekeeper  " 101 

XIV  The  Old  Story 108 

XV  A  Domestic  Despot 125 

XVI     The  Joys  of  Flirtation   136 

XVII     The  Calverts  Abroad 146 


CONTENTS 

XVIII  Number  Three  . .  .^ 157 

XIX  A   Broken   Engagement    165 

XX  The  Shopper  Abroad 172 

XXI  A  Broken  Heart  179 

XXII  "  FaciHs  Decensus  "  192 

XXIII  A  "  A  Man  of  the  World  " 204 

•  XXIV  Education  Tells 212 

XXV  The  Bottomless  Pit 219 

XXVI  Deserted    229 

XXVII  Lost— The  Last  Chance 234 

XXVIII  Belmont   242 

XXIX  Austen  Brown  .'. 254 

XXX  How  "  Swells  "  Are  Evolved 262 

XXXI  The  Mrs.    Browns    267 

XXXII  The  "  Shadows  We  Pursue  !  " 276 

XXXIII  "  The  Day  Is  Past  and  Gone  " 281 

THE  HOWf:S. 

XXXIV  "Ifs"  290 

XXXV  Discovery    298 

XXXVI  Sentenced    310 

XXXVII  An  Adventuress    319 

XXXVIII  The  Worm  at  the  Root 327 

THE  BROWNS. 


XXXIX     "The  Evil  That  Men   Do  Lives  After 

Them"  337 

XL    The  Bubble  Bursts 346 

XLI     Man  and  Nature 352 


CONTENTS 


CALVERT. 


XLII  A  "  Business  "  American 363 

XLIII  A  Democratic  Leader  372 

XLIV  Something  Men  Hate   378 

XLV  An  American  Editor 382 

XLVI  '*  His  Little  Game "  388 

XLVH  A  "Statesman"    392 

XLVHI  A  "  Party  "  Nomination  398 

XLIX  Vox  Populi 405 

L  An  Anglo-Irish  Journalist 408 

LI  A  Traitor  to  Jefferson 414 

LII  A  Presidential  Nomination 421 

LIII  The  Ministers  and  the  Man 428 

LIV  A  Presidential  Campaign  434 

LV  More  Godkin  Ethics 442 

LVI  October,  1884 447 

LVII  "  Counted  In  "  453 

LVIII  The  Apex  , 457 

LIX  Dust  to  Dust 463 

LX  Did  It  Pay 469 

LXI  The  First  Cleveland  Term 472 

LXII  The  Harrison  Administration  475 

LXIII  The  Second  Cleveland  Term 479 

LXIV  The  Cleveland  Exit  482 

LXV  A  Character  Sketch  486 

LXVI  Sowing  and  Reaping 490 

LXVII  The  Unforgivable 4^2 

LXVIII  "  From  Bad  to  Worse  " 49« 

LXIX  And  Worse  Remains  Behind 501 


NEW  YORK: 

A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 
PART   I.— THE    TERRESTRIAL    DISCORD. 


PRELUDE 

In  penning  the  following  pages  my  motive  has  been  the 
underlying  motive  of  my  whole  life — to  rescue  my  own 
sex  from  profanation  and  ruin. 

If  they  should  at  all  contribute  to  this  submerged  Cause 
to  the  same  extent  they  would  also  save  my  country  from 
imperialism. 

For  the  cause  of  Inviolate  Womanhood  is  the  cause  of 
Republican  Institutions.  Profaned  and  ruined  woman- 
hood  presupposes  profaning  and  sensual  manhood,  and  pro- 
faning and  sensual  manhood  in  every  age  and  clime  of  the 
world  has  meant  autocratic  government — the  many,  in 
some  form,  by  some  means,  ruled  by  the  few. 

Collective  man  never  is  and  never  has  been  non-gov- 
erned. Collective  man  is  and  always  has  been  governed 
either  by  himself  collectively  and  therefore  what  is  called 


6  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

self-governed,  or  governed  by  some  one  else,  and  there- 
fore ruled. 

Government,  however,  in  every  case  implies  a  law 
which  the  governed  obeys.  To  what  law,  then,  shall  men 
conform  in  order  to  enjoy  self-government  and  to  evolve, 
perpetuate  and  enlarge  free  institutions f 

The  late  0.  Henry — the  loved,  the  lamented — to  one 
who  sought  his  viezvs  of  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  replied: — 
'7  had  a  little  dog  and  his  name  was  Rover.  When  he 
died  he  died  all  over'* — and  immediately  changed  the 
subject. 

The  god-like  Edison,  Promethean  benefactor  of  mankind, 
was  asked  what  he  ivas  aiming  at  and  what  was  the  use, 
after  all,  of  his  inventions?  He  quickly  returned: — '7 
don't  know  what  you  and  I  are  here  for  or  where  we  are 
going.  Do  you  f  JVhy  do  people  rush  and  struggle?  Why 
do  you  write  as  though  your  life  depended  on  it  and  enjoy 
it,  too?  Why  do  I  invent?  We  work  because  in  some  way 
it  satisfies  us.    That  is  all  I  know." 

And  I  recall  ''"t?  sn^nc  years  ago  the  rich  and  brilliant 
Labouchere  of  London,  echoing  the  famous  Omar  Khay- 
yam, declared  in  his  newspaper,  "  Truth"  that  since  zve 
human  beings  "  arc  pitched  on  to  this  revolvina  'all"  from 
we  knoiv  not  zvherc,  for  zve  know  not  why,  and  are  zuhirl- 
ing  we  know  not  whither,  the  manifold  lapses  and  errors 
into  which  we  fall  should  be  considered  and  judged 
leniently  rather  than  severely. 

But  if  the  nrcat,  the  gifted  and  the  successful  among 
mankind  can  thus  content  themselves  to  drift  from  birth 
to  death  without  any  spiritual  Polar  Star  to  guide  them, 
to  one  humble  thinker  the  injustice  of  life,  so  far  greater 


XEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  7 

than  its  justice — the  sorrow  of  life,  so  hopelessly  out- 
weighing its  joy — would  make  such  a  mental  attitude 
impossible.  Without  a  definite  conviction  whence  we 
have  come,  why  we  are  here,  and  whither  ive  are  going, 
the  voluntary  acceptance  of  human  limitations  and  suffer- 
ings, the  voluntary  endurance  of  the  intolerable  spectacle 
of  the  weak  everyivhere  betrayed  and  exploited  by  the 
strong,  would  argue  a  lack  of  rational  intelligence.  Sui- 
cide, especially  for  women,  would  he  the  only  common 
sense. 

Whoever  then  takes  the  trouble  to  read  these  pages 
will  kindly  remember  throughout  that  they  were  penned 
according  to  the  teachings  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments as  the  writer  understands  them.  Other  races,  other 
minds,  than  the  Hebrews  of  ancient  Palestine  have  had 
and  do  have  their  theories  of  the  problem  of  mortal  des- 
tiny. To  the  writer,  that  which  she  finds  in  the  so-called 
Bible  is  at  once  perfectly  beautiftd,  beautifully  perfect, 
and  utterly,  absolutely,  infinitely  satisfying. 

The  Highest  Authority  of  that  Bible  said — "Judge  not 
according  to  the  appearance,  but  judge  riqhfcous  judg- 
ment." 

Of  what  avail  is  it  if  reformers  and  statesmen,  from 
reporters  to  presidents,  attack  and  mow  dozvn  the  poison- 
grozvth  every  where  overspreading  the  land,  if  the  living 
root  thereof  be  still  left  ignored  and  undisturbed  in  the 
ground? 

In  this  book — written  haltingly  and  at  long  intervals 
because  of  an  almost  insurmountable  repugnance  to  the 
task — liritten  therefore,  imperfectly,  inadequately,  as  we 
do  everything  that  we  mortally  hate  to  do  and  that  is 


8  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

bitterly  more  than  we  can  do — /  have  tried  to  lay  bare  the 
poison-root  itself  and  to  indicate  the  sole  force  that  can 
destroy  it. 

Melusina  Fay  Peirce, 
Chicago^ 
1910. 


MRS.  DEXTER. 


CHAPTER  I. 


MRS.    DEXTER. 


Up  to  sixty  years  ago  a  certain  beautifully  placed  New 
England  village  had  been  connected  with  New  York  and 
Boston  only  by  stage-coach,  about  fifty  miles  nearer  the 
latter  than  the  former,  and  had  therefore  been  doing  all 
its  business  and  deriving  its  highest  standards  from  her. 
While  there  were  no  cast-iron  distinctions  in  Belmont 
society,  so  that  at  a  general  party  you  would  probably 
meet  your  shoemaker  and  your  dressmaker,  there  was  also 
an  inner  circle  of  friends  who  dropped  daily  in  and  out 
of  each  other's  houses  and  often  invited  each  other  to 
high  tea,  and  who  were  so  cultured  and  refined  that,  even 
granting  an  occasional  provincialism,  they  would  have 
been  enjoyed  as  intelligent  and  agreeable  gentle-folk  any- 
where. 

The  leading  lawyers  and  the  pastors  of  the  Congre- 
gational  and    Episcopal    churches   with   their    wives  and 


yEPV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

daughters,  the  delightful  and  remarkable  unmarried  sister 
of  one  of  these  lawyers,  a  prosperous  and  exceedingly 
decorous  banker's  family,  the  principal  school-mistress,  a 
genial  merchant  and  his  wife,  together  with  two  or  three 
other  women  wonderfully  and  inscrutably  superior  to  their 
stolid  and  limited  bread-winners  of  husbands ;  these  people 
at  once  gave  an  educated  tone  to  the  little  place  and  led  a 
pleasant  life  themselves.  Exquisite  New  England  house- 
wifery was  common  among  them,  and  to  live  well  within 
their  means  much  of  their  New  England  religion. 

In  this  clever  circle  there  was,  however,  one  person 
who  felt  herself  not  of  it,  but  born  for  a  very  different 
sphere.  Very  pretty  and  a  rustic  belle  in  her  youth,  as  a 
matron  of  forty-five  she  was  unpoetically  stout  and  de- 
cidedly faded,  though  her  teeth  were  as  fine,  and  in  spite 
of  much  housework,  her  hand  and  foot  nearly  as  small 
as  ever.  Her  hair,  which  had  early  turned  grey,  she  kept 
to  its  original  black  by  dyeing.  Her  husband  was  a 
plodding  lawyer  in  Belmont,  and  she  was  the  mother  of 
three  daughters.  Her  ruling  traits  were  a  vanity  so  trans- 
parent and  a  pretension  so  extraordinary,  that  in  the 
village  her  very  name,  ''Mrs.  Dexter,"  was  almost  a  by- 
word, so  synonymous  was  it  with  insincerity,  and  above 
all,  with  absurdity.  Beginning  life  -with  nothing,  every 
step  in  her  domestic  career  had  been  a  triumph,  as  one 
by  one  she  gathered  round  her  the  inexpensive  household 
decorations  that  expressed  her  naturally  ' '  frenchy  ' '  taste. 
By  the  time  her  eldest  daughter  was  in  long  dresses,  her 
little  parlors  had  attained  to  turkey-red  curtains  and  a 
tapestry  carpet  gay  with  flowers — and  very  bright  and 
cheerful  in  the  long  winter  evenings  they  looked. 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  H 

It  is  often  the  case  that  people  whom  their  fellows  can- 
not respect  or  even  heartily  like,  have  very  pleasant  houses 
to  go  to,  and  this  was  the  case  with  Mrs.  Dexter.  Though 
she  was  the  person  most  ridiculed  and  disapproved  of  in 
the  community,  her  house  was  practically  one  of  the  most 
popular,  perhaps  because  her  manner  was  always  cordial, 
and  because  she  was  too  much  taken  up  with  her  own  in- 
terests to  spend  much  time  in  discussing  her  neighbors.  She 
was  profuse  in  her  flattering  expressions,  talked  constantly 
of  what  she  would  do  for  the  church  and  for  society  if  she 
only  had  the  means,  and  provided  it  cost  nothing,  she 
really  was  occasionally  kind  and  obliging ;  but  if  it  could 
be  helped  she  never  paid  a  debt,  or  gave  an  entertainment, 
or  a  present,  or  a  subscription,  no  matter  how  small. 

Her  insincerity  and  meanness,  however,  did  not  extend 
to  her  children.  In  this  land  of  devoted  and  indulgent 
mothers  she  was  among  the  most  so,  and  as  her  daughters 
grew  up,  her  whole  life  became  a  plot  and  a  strain  and  a 
sacrifice  to  marry  them  according  to  her  ambition.  Bel- 
mont, she  felt,  had  never  been  the  right  sphere  for  herself. 
Its  people  were  too  undemonstrative,  their  principles  too 
severe,  their  tastes  too  quiet  for  this  inborn  Frenchwoman. 
In  her  heart  she  determined  that  her  girls  should  have  a 
better  chance  than  she  had  had.  And  there  was  nothing 
of  the  white  feather  in  her  ambition.  It  was  vaulting. 
The  long-building  railroad  which  was  to  connect  New 
York  and  Montreal,  had,  in  1849,  at  last  got  as  far  as  Bel- 
mont, and  its  daily  ''through"  train  brought  to  the  slow 
pulse  of  the  tranquil  hamlet  the  bounding  throb  of  the 
eager  metropolis  whose  household  gods  are  Mammon  for 
men  and  Fashion  for  women. 

Mrs.  Dexter' s  was  the  first  rapturous  response  of  Belmont 


12  NEW  YORK;  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

to  what  was  destined  to  prove  a  poison  thrill.  Her  heaven 
upon  earth,  the  great,  rushing^  fascinating  city  of  New 
York,  which  years  ago  she  had  just  once  visited,  and  which 
hitherto  had  seemed  so  unattainable  was  now — transport ! 
— within  a  day's  paltry  journey.  She  had  a  second  cousin 
living  there,  and  she  determined  that  Julia,  her  eldest 
daughter,  just  past  seventeen,  should  spend  there  her 
eighteenth  winter. 

Thence  was  despatched  in  May  an  affectionate  epistle, 
phonetic  in  spelling  and  regardless  o^  stops,  but  containing 
cordial  invitations  to  her  cousin  and  all  her  cousin's  family 
to  spend  the  coming  summer  in  Belmont.  She  lamented 
that  in  a  place  where  everybody  was  related  to  everybody 
else,  the  Dexters  alone  were  almost  without  a  family  circle, 
so  that  her  ''poor  children"  were  always  wishing  they 
had  cousins  as  the  other  Belmont  girls  had.  Now  that  the 
railroad  at  last  united  New  York  and  Belmont,  she  couldn't 
help  hoping  that  their  young  people  might  soon  get  ac- 
quainted and  mutually  enjoy  and  improve  each  other. 
Not,  of  course,  that  her  ''little  country  Julia"  could  im- 
prove her  cousin's  "  dear,  city-bred  Anna  !"  Far  from  it ! 
Julia,  she  was  sorry  to  say,  needed  much  polishing  in  the 
graces  and  accomplishments !  But  she  was  a  very  intel- 
lectual girl  ("intellectual"  and  "stylish"  were  Mrs. 
Dexter' s  favorite  words,  because  she  knew  she  was  the 
latter  and  feared  she  ought  to  be  the  former),  and  Mrs. 
Dexter  was  sure  that  she  and  Anna  would  enjoy  their 
books  and  their  walks  together.  In  fact,  this  oldest 
daughter  would  be  so  glad  to  have  a  companion  more  con- 
genial to  her  than  the  "  rather  ordinary  "  young  ladies  of 
Belmont,  that  "  she  sends  word  to  dear  Anna  by  me,  if  she 
will  only  come,  we  will  do  everything  in  our  power  to 
make  her  happy,  etc.,  etc." 


NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  13 

The  cousin  did  not  find  it  convenient  to  accept  the 
invitation,  as  ''unfortunately,"  so  she  expressed  herself, 
*'we  have  just  completed  our  arrangements  for  the 
season,"  but  she  suggested  that  if  Julia  would  come  and 
spend  the  next  winter  in  New  York,  perhaps  Anna  would 
return  with  her  to  Belmont  the  following  summer. 

This  was  precisely  the  turn  for  which  Mrs.  Dexter  had 
hoped.  All  the  friends  of  the  delighted  mother  were 
henceforth  bored  to  death  with  eternal  descriptions  of  how 
dear,  how  estimable,  how  remarkable  a  woman  was  her 
cousin,  Mrs.  Wilkins,  how  fond  they  had  been  of  eaca 
other  when  they  were  girls,  what  a  privilege  it  was  to  be 
with  her,  ''and  oh,  such  a  de-z'^Z-ed  Christian,  too,  Mr. 
Gardner-a-h !  ' '  she  exclaimed  to  her  pastor,  closing  her 
eyes  with  a  peculiar  sanctimoniousness  that  in  a  suitable 
presence  she  could  assume  on  the  instant. 

Mr.  Dexter' s  income,  however,  *only  sufficed  for  their 
ordinary  expenses,  and  here  would  be  an  extraordinary  one, 
involving  not  only  the  travelling  to  New  York,  but  a  ward- 
robe, at  least  in  externals,  quite  beyond  anything  to  which 
any  Belmont  belle  had  as  yet  aspired.  But  Mrs.  Dexter 
was  far  too  able  a  strategist  to  have  planned  a  campaign 
without  knowing  beforehand  where  was  to  be  procured  the 
material  of  war. 


CHAPTER  II. 

*'POOR   TIM." 

Joseph,  or  '^Joe"  Dexter,  as  Mrs.  Dexter's  lord  and 
master  was  familiarly  called,  having  been  early  left  an 
orphan,  was  taken  in  and  brought  up  by  a  kindly  old  uncle 
who  lived  on  a  farm  some  twenty  miles  east  from  Belmont. 
In  the  nearest  village  was  a  large  collegiate  academy  [i\ 
whichj  under  the  auspices  of  the  Methodists,  the  co-educa^ 
tion  of  grown  youths  and  maidens  was  carried  on  without 
any  suspicion  on  the  part  of  either  teachers  or  pupils  that 
they  were  solving  a  great  educational  problem  long  before 
its  future  agitation  in  the  high  educational  world.  Mr. 
Dexter's  uncle  had  only  one  child,  a  son,  and  he,  without 
being  an  idiot  outright,  was,  as  his  neighbors  said,  so  de- 
cidedly ''wanting,"  that  his  father  did  not  even  attempt 
the  higher  education  for  him,  but  gave  the  academic  ad- 
vantages that  might  otherwise  have  been  his,  to  his  cousin. 
''Nephew  Joe"  was  grateful  for  the  kindness,  and  when, 
some  years  after,  his  benefactor  was  about  td  die  and  leave 
poor  Timothy  without  a  home  and  with,  perhaps,  two  thou- 
sand dollars  in  difficult  savings,  he  promised  •  the  uneasy 
father  that  the  feeble-minded  one  should  have  a  home  with 
him,  and  also  that  he  would  carefully  guard  for  him  his 
little  fortune. 

He  made  this  promise  on  the  rash  impulse  of  an  affect- 
ing moment,  and  as  he  drove  back  to  Belmont  he  felt  un- 


N£IV  YORK;   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  .    15 

comfortably  enough  at  the  thought  of  the  freezing  look  he 
was  certain  to  encounter  from  the  pale-blue  determined  eye 
of  his  wife  as  he  told  her  of  it.  He  was  an  easy  man,  and 
so  hated  the  angry  expostulation  of  which,  in  her  own 
cause,  Mrs.  Dexter  was  only  too  capable,  that  he  generally 
gave  m  before  any  disagreement  was  well  on.  But  fore- 
warned is  fore-armed.  Through  all  the  homeward  miles 
he  was  predetermined  to  maintain  his  ground,  and  before 
going  to  sleep  he  ended  the  stormy  upbraidings  which,  ac- 
cording to  anticipation,  descended  upon  him,  by  saying 
imperiously:  ''Come  wife!  Make  the  best  of  it.  He's 
very  quiet,  poor  fellow !  You  won't  find  it  so  bad  as  you 
think." 

Mrs.  Dexter  did  make  the  best  of  it,  but  wholly  from 
her  own  point  of  view,  which  was  to  get  the  best  of  it. 
From  the  first  she  "put  her  foot  down,"  as  she  declared 
to  her  children  she  would,  that  Tim  should  not  eat  with 
the  family.  "/  won't  have  him  at  the  table!  "  she  ex- 
claimed, "  his  table-manners  are  disgusting — no  better' n  a 
farm  hand's." 

"You  ate  with  farm  hands  years  enough  at  your  own 
grandfather's  table,  and  in  your  own  grandfather's  kitchen, 
Libby,"  retorted  her  husband,  "  not  to  be  putting  on  airs 
now." 

"  If  I  did  I  was  sickened  enough  with  it  then,  and  if  I 
was  going  to  keep  in  a  farm  atmosphere  all  my  days,  what 
did  I  marry  you  for,  I'd  like  to  know?  I  don't  propose 
that  my  refined  children  shall  be  exposed  to  what  I  was 
subjected  to  after  my  own  dear  father's  death." 

Through  this  clever  device  Mrs.  Dexter  avoided  increas- 
ing her  closely-calculated  table  supply,  and  poor  Tim  had 
to  content  himself  in  the  kitchen  with  what  little  was  left 


i6  .  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

over.  By  insufficient  food,  and  by  all  the  winter  discom- 
fort within  the  power  of  the  ^house-mistress  in  a  severe 
climate  to  inflict,  she  made  the  hapless  creature's  life  such 
a  burden  to  him,  that  he  was  continually  wandering  back 
over  the  hills  to  spend  weeks  at  a  time  with  old  friends  and 
neighbors  who  were  more  compassionate  than  his  flinty 
relative.  About  the  time  of  the  Mexican  war  he  drifted 
away  altogether,  and  now  for  some  time  had  not  been 
heard  of.  Mrs.  Dexter  devoutly  hoped  that  the  war  had 
swallowed  him  up,  and  improvising  a  fable  on  that  theory 
one  day  to  a  cousin  who  was  enquiring  about  him,  she  soon 
imposed  it  upon  her  own  mind  as  an  absolute  fact. 

It  was  to  the  trust-money  in  her  husband's  hands  belong- 
ing to  this  feeble  being  that,  even  before  angling  for  the 
New  York  invitation,  she  had  looked  to  aid  her  in  her  ma- 
ternal project  for  her  eldest  daughter.  When  with  sparkling 
eyes  she  had  read  out  to  Mr.  Dexter  her  cousin's  letter,  she 
exclaimed:  ''Of  course  we  must  let  her  go!  It  would 
be  everything  to  her." 

But  Mr.  Dexter  answered  slowly :  "  Well — yes — 'twould 
be  a  good  thing  for  Jule,  I  don't  doubt.  But  I  don't  see 
how  we  can  afford  it.  You  must  see  that  yourself.  You 
know  there's  a  payment  due  yet  on  these  carpets,"  glanc- 
ing across  the  cheerful  parlors. 

''  Not  much — and  it  would  only  take  about  a  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars.  And  what  if  we  do  let  our  Belmont  bills 
run  behind  for  a  year  or  two,  for  the  child's  good?  Our 
credit's  good,  and  what's  the  use  of  having  credit  if  you 
can't  use  it?  A  poor  hundred  or  two  oughtn't  to  weigh 
against  the  possibility  of  Jule' s  settling  herself  in  life  with 
a  good  city  match."  ^ 

' '  She  might  not  make  the  match,  and  there  would  be 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  17 

the  debt.  I  really  don't  see,  Elizabeth,  how  we  can  ven- 
ture it." 

"Julia  not  marry?  As  pretty  as  she  is?  Nonsense! 
She's  sure  to  marry  well  if  she  has  only  half  a  chance. 
But  what  chance  has  she  here?  There's  not  a  single  mate 
in  town  for  her,  and  you  know  that  as  well  as  I  do. 
Julia  isn't  the  girl  to  live  off  candle-ends  and  do  her  own 
work  as  all  but  about  three  of  us  Belmont  women  do.  But, 
Joe!  " — with  a  sudden  animation  as  if  it  had  just  flashed 
upon  her — ''  Why  can't  we  borrow  it  of  Tim's  legacy  ?  " 

''Not  to  be  thought  of.  That  is  trust-money,  you 
know. ' ' 

'''Trust'  fiddlestick!  Why  shouldn't  it  be  thought 
of?  If  your  uncle  was  alive  and  you  asked  him  to  lend  it, 
he  would  in  a  minute.  He  thought  more  of  you  than  he 
did  of  his  own  poor  cretur  anyway."  (In  the  bosom  of 
her  family  Mrs.  Dexter  often  lapsed  into  the  vernacular  in 
which  she  had  been  brought  up). 

"  He  might  lend  it,  but  he  would  be  sure  to  want  se- 
curity.    He  was  pretty  long-headed,  was  uncle." 

"  Well,  Tim  hasn't  been  heard  of  for  four  years,  and  of 
course  he's  dead ;  and  if  he  is,  one-third  of  the  money  is 
your's  anyhow.  Come,  Joe  !  Do  have  common  sense 
and  common  feeling  for  your  own  child.  Of  course  we'll 
gradually  replace  the  loan.  Why  shouldn't  we?  Any- 
body'd  think  we're  thieves.  Don't  be  ridiklus,  old 
man  !  " 

As  has  been  said,  Mr.  Dexter  was  easy-going,  and  be- 
sides, in  his  secret  heart,  he  was  himself  well  pleased  at  the 
idea  of  his  little  girl  going  down  to  the  great  gay  city  with 
an  outfit  that  would  justly  set  off  her  undoubted  charms. 
His  wife  perceived  his  leaning  and  returned  again  and 


i8  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

again  to  the  charge  until  at  last  he  yielded,  and  confided 
to  her  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  she  decided  she 
required. 

That  sum,  in  those  days  before  the  Civil  War  had  raised 
prices,  or  the  sewing  machine  had  introduced  the  modern 
elaboration  of  "trimmings,"  meant  a  good  deal.  The  guest- 
room was  assigned  to  a  dressmaker,  who  came  and  stayed 
in  the  house,  and  there  she  and  Mrs.  Dexter  and  Julia  sat, 
cutting,  fitting  and  stitching  for  the  young  debutante,  until, 
in  addition  to  her  usual  wardrobe,  there  hung  in  the  guest- 
room closet  a  silk  of  ''mazarine"  or  dark  blue,  a  black  silk, 
a  breakfast  wrapper  of  maroon  merino  with  cord  and 
tassel  round  the  waist  and  the  skirt  flowing  open  to  display 
a  worked  petticoat  beneath,  and  a  party  dress  of  white 
tarletane.  These,  with  a  pink  satin  bonnet  and  a  new 
cloak  and  furs,  Mrs.  Dexter  judged  sufficient  for  Julia  to 
begin  the  world  with.  She  had  visions  of  one  or  two  more 
dresses  that  might  be  managed  later  if  they  were  found 
indispensable. 


CHAPTER  III. 

JULIA. 

When  the  pretty  clothes  were  all  done,  and  Julia  had 
tried  them  all  on  in  succession,  in  order  to  show  them  to 
the  fond  eyes  of  her  father,  the  result  was  such  as  to  make 
him  privately  confident  that  the  matrimonial  campaign  was 
as  good  as  won.  For  Julia  certainly  was  pretty,  nay,  she 
was  one  of  those  unaccountable  children  that  make  one 
wonder  where  their  parents  got  them,  so  unlike  by  nature 
did  she  seem  to  either  of  hers  and  to  her  mother  in  par- 
ticular. Providential  that  nature  so  often  does  "  hark 
back  "  to  her  better  things,  or  what  would  become  of  the 
race ! 

She  was  a  Httle  creature,  this  Julia,  with  a  rather  flat 
bosom  and  pipe-stem  arms  which  she  had  inherited  from 
her  father,  who  was  the  typical  "  lank "  American ;  but 
her  waist  was  tiny,  her  back  was  straight,  and  her  perfect 
lower  shapeliness  and  extremely  small  hands  and  feet  she 
owed  to  her  mother.  Mrs.  Dexter's  petite  extremities, 
however,  were  plump  and  commonplace,  whereas  Julia's 
were  poetically  slender  and  her  hand  as  soft  and  white  as 
a  white  rose-leaf.  Her  little  head  was  well  shaped  and 
well  set  and  covered  with  waving  black  hair  that  contrasted 
charmingly  with  her  broad  white  brow  and  pink  cheeks. 
Her  features  were  regular,  her  teeth  like  pearls,  and  her 
mouth  and  smile  lovely.    Her  pale  blue  eyes  were  rather 


20  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

weak,  but  this  defect  was  hardly  noticed,  as  she  never 
more  than  half  opened  them  and  kept  them  much  upon  the 
ground.  Taking  her  altogether  the  ensemble  was  not  only 
pretty,  but  fascinating.  She  was  as  proud  as  her  mother 
was  vain,  and  she  threw  back  her  little  head  with  such  hau- 
teur that  she  actually  added  to  her  height ;  but  then  she  had, 
too,  when  she  smiled,  the  sweetest  dimples  in  her  cheeks  in 
the  world. 

She  was  a  spoiled  child,  and  therefore  hardly  to  be 
blamed  for  being  indolent,  self-indulgent  and  high  tem- 
pered ;  but  she  was  truly  affectionate,  intensely  loyal  to 
her  friends  and  very  intelligent.  Though  with  no  educa- 
tion other  than  she  had  picked  up  in  a  careless  and  desul- 
tory attendance  at  the  village  academy,  and  no  accom- 
plishment save  that  of  banging  dissonant  chords  on  the 
piano  and  screaming  a  song  fearfully  out  of  tune — she  yet 
had  so  much  dignity,  tact  and  natural  refinement,  she  kept 
so  well  up  in  current  light  literature,  and  withal  dressed  so 
tastefully,  looked  so  pretty,  and  talked  so  easily  and  brightly, 
that  (provided  she  were  not  asked  to  sing)  she  would  have 
adorned  any  drawing-room  anywhere.  In  short,  she  was 
a  born  elegafite. 

To  do  poor  Mrs.  Dexter  justice,  Julia  was  her  idol.  She 
believed  her  to  be  gifted  with  a  rare  and  profound  intellect, 
and  looked  up  to  her  daughter  as  to  a  real  superior.  And 
nature  had  indeed  meant  Julia  to  be  one  of  her  truest  ladies 
and  noblest  women,  but  she  was  spoiled  in  the  after-making. 

To  New  York  at  last  the  fond  mother  despatched  her 
darling,  and  all  winter  long  the  village  was  edified  with 
Julia's  city  experience — the  churches,  the  operas,  the  par- 
ties and  the  lectures  she  went  to,  the  new  dresses  she  bought, 
and,  above  all,  with  the  dancing  class  at  Dodworth's,  of 


X£ir  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  21 

which  she,  according  to  her  mother,  became  a  distinguished 
member.  She  went  for  a  stay  of  three  months,  but  the 
whole  eight  of  the  New  England  winter  had  dragged  them- 
selves out  before  Julia  came  home,  bringing  with  her  that 
''lovely  girl,"  her  cousin  Anna,  upon  whom  Mrs.  Dexter 
had  so  fervently  descanted  all  the  previous  year.  She 
turned  out  to  be  a  tall,  plain,  dull,  unpretending,  and  un- 
attractive young  woman,  and  a  most  admirable  foil  to  her 
charming  country  cousin,  who  had  returned  with  her  hair 
revolutionized  by  the  new  Parisian  coiffure,  with  all  the 
rest  of  her  make-up  piquante  in  the  extreme  from  being  (as 
Belmont  firmly  believed)  in  the  very  latest  fashion — with 
more  tossings  of  the  pretty  head  and  more  satisfaction  with 
herself  than  ever,  but  with  the  same  warm  and  true  heart 
underneath  it  all.  Something  else,  too,  she  came  back 
with,  in  fact  with  the  very  thing  her  mother  had  sent  her 
for,  as  the  village  soon  in  high  interest  whispered  to  itself 
— "a  beau  !  " 

Julia's  admirer  was  a  dashing  young  clerk  at  the  head  of 
an  important  retail  department  of  a  renowned  New  York 
dry  goods  house.  Like  Julia  herself,  he  was  from  the  coun- 
try and  had  received  but  a  village  school  education.  His 
original  name  was  Jones,  but  in  contempt  he  had  changed 
it  to  Calvert,  and  "  Frank  Calvert"  had  certainly  a  very 
taking  sound.  It  was  well  chosen,  too,  for  he  was  a  hand- 
some, generous,  spirited  fellow,  blessed  with  good  sense  and 
steady  habits,  and  as  he  joined  an  excellent  capacity  for 
business  with  great  attention  to  it,  he  was  a  favorite  with 
the  merchant  prince,  his  employer,  and  on  his  way  up  in 
the  world. 

True  that  he  had  not  fortified  his  scanty  education  with 
miscellaneous  light  reading,  as  Julia  had  hers,    so  that  he 


2  2  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

could  not  SO  crushingly  deprecate  ^the  last  poor  novel,  or 
descant  as  fluently  and  authoritatively  upon  the  great  con- 
temporary lights — Hawthorne,  Thackeray,  Dickens  and 
t.  harles  Kingsley — as  she ;  but  for  all  that,  as  matches  go 
Julia  might  have  gone  much  further  and  fared  much  worse 
— while  as  to  character,  though  not,  like  herself,  a  "mem- 
ber of  the  church  ' '  (the  Episcopal  church  of  course — Mrs. 
Dexter' s  instinct  for  externals  and  swelldom  could  not 
have  united  with  any  other),  his  spartan  beginnings  and 
long  business  training  had  made  him  far  more  capable  of 
industry,  patience,  self-denial  and  devotion,  than  was  the 
spoiled  and  flattered  little  maiden  with  whom  he  was  so 
desperately  in  love. 

Mamma  Dexter  was  radiantly  satisfied  with  Frank  Calvert 
as  a  prospective  son-in-law.  A  high-priest  in  one  of  the 
great  temples — nay,  in  the  temple  of  American  fashion, 
what  could  have  suited  her  better  ?  The  fastidious  Julia, 
however,  was  hardly  so  well  content  in  contemplating  him 
as  a  husband.  She  declared  over  and  over  again  to  her 
mother  and  to  her  most  intimate  friend  that  he  was  not  her 
"ideal." 

The  truth  was,  Julia's  father  had  talent  enough  to  be  a 
little  of  a  thinker  and  a  good  deal  of  a  talker,  and  as  she 
was  constantly  told,  and  really  imagined  herself  to  be, 
"  intellectual,"  she  had  always  aspired,  and  indeed  had 
determined,  to  marry  a  lawyer.  The  leading  lawyer  of 
Belmont,  Mr.  Ashurst,  was,  as  she  expressed  it,  her  "ad- 
miration. ' '  He  was  one  of  the  first  men  in  the  State,  a 
Harvard  man  as  well,  and  a  most  rare  and  delightful  com- 
panion. The  families  were  near  neighbors  and  saw  each 
other  often,  and  Julia  was  intelligent  enough  to  appreciate 
and  thoroughly  to  admire,  not  only  Mr.  but  Miss  Ashurst, 


JVEPV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  23 

his  still  more  brilliant  sister,  who  was  almost  as  well-known 
throughout  the  State  for  her  culture  and  eloquence  in  con- 
versation, as  he  was  for  legal  learning  and  acumen. 

Julia  took  Miss  Ashurst  partially  for  her  model,  and 
when  that  lady,  at  the  maturity  of  thirty-nine,  married  a 
judge  from  Springfield,  Massachusetts — Julia,  though  then 
but  fifteen,  M^as  much  impressed  with  the  stir  and  excite- 
ment throughout  the  little  community  over  this  marriage, 
at  the  universal  lamentation  over  the  lady's  departure,  and 
still  more  with  the  leading  position  she  at  once  took  in  the 
society  to  which  she  was  transferred.  Julia  loved  to  imag- 
ine herself  playing  a  similar  part,  for  Miss  Ashurst  had 
money,  and  was  never  obliged,  nor  ever  known,  to  clip 
her  bright  wings  with  the  household  cares  to  which  all  the 
other  women  in  Belmont  were  slaves,  and  to  which  Julia 
had  a  genuine  literary  aversion.  Therefore,  though  Mr. 
Calvert's  handsome  person  and  chivalric  devotion  had  to  a 
certain  extent  won  her  heart,  so  that  she  found  herself  too 
much  in  love  with  him  to  refuse  him,  yet  neither  her  am- 
bition nor  her  judgment  were  quite  satisfied. 

She  was  captivated,  but  her  lover  did  not  command  her 
reverence,  and  therefore  her  passion,  as  her  real  superior, 
and  something  deep  and  true  told  this  imperious  young 
creature  that  she  ought  to  have  a  husband  upon  whom  her 
mind  could  rest  as  well  as  her  heart.  While  coquetting 
with  Mr.  Calvert's  offer,  over  and  over  again  she  ended  the 
discussions  with  her  mother  about  it  by  saying,  with  strange 
wistful  instinct  for  her  mother's  daughter,  that  she  wanted 
to  marry  a  man  she  could  ''  look  up  to." 

But  no  snch  parti  was  then  in  Belmont,  and  Mrs.  Dexter 
was  too  much  fired  with  the  ambition  of  seeing  her  darling 
married  to  an  energetic  New  Yorker,  and  married  early,  to 


24  .V£IV  YOJ^K:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

favor  her  waiting  for  a  more  congenial  suitor.  Half  in 
love,  therefore,  and  half  in  vanity,  with  a  mixture  of  ten- 
derness and  prudence  and  that  relentless  conviction  that 
impels  so  many  girls  to  the  irrevocable  step —  There  is 
nothing  better  for  me  to  do  I  — Julia  Dexter  plighted  her- 
self to  Francis  Calvert,  loving  him  dearly  and  even  jeal- 
ously, but  still  enthroning  herself  consciously  above  him, 
and  perfectly  satisfied  to  see  him  a  devoted  slave  at  her 
feet. 

It  took  her  many  months  to  make  up  her  mind,  and  it 
was  six  or  eight  more  before  the  wedding-day  was  fixed. 
According  to  the  sensible  and  far  more  delicate  country 
custom,  the  engagement  was  not  announced  until  shortly 
before  the  marriage,  and  up  to  that  time  Mrs.  Dexter 
was  extremely  mysterious  and  non-committal.  Afterward, 
she  copiously  edified  her  friends  on  Julia's  trousseau 
and  on  Mr.  Calvert's  unexampled  virtues  and  graces,  and 
somewhat  the  reverse  of  edified  the  more  thoughtful  on 
what  she  hoped  would  be  the  starting  principles  of  the 
young  menage.  ''Julia  is  delicate,  and  I  think  it  is  per- 
fectly barbarous  for  a  young  girl  to  have  children  and  go 
to  housekeeping  the  first  thing.  Housekeeping  is  nothing 
but  work  and  slave  from  morning  till  night,  and  children 
had  better  not  come  until  they  are  wanted,  etc.,  etc." 

Poor  little  Julia  !  It  was  hard  to  send  her  forth  into  the 
battle  of  life  with  only  the  training  such  parents  could  give; 
and  when  in  the  emerald  days  of  June  she  went  round 
making  her  farewell  calls  in  delicate  muslin  and  a  dainty 
New  York  bonnet,  she  looked  so  sweet  and  so  sincere  that 
those  who  most  resented  her  mother's  follies  and  preten- 
sions could  not  but  wish  her  well. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MRS.   DEXTER's    "  NEW   JERUSALEM." 

Up  to  this  point  Julia's  wedding  was  the  most  exciting 
event  of  Mrs.  Dexter's  life,  not  only  as -the  occasion  of 
her  marrying  her  favorite  child  in  a  manner  she  entirely 
approved,  but  also  because  she  aspired  to  have  Julia's 
the  most  "  stylish  "  wedding  that  had  ever  been  seen  in 
Belmont. 

She  had  never  given  so  large  a  party  as  this  was  to  be. 
The  ceremony  was  fixed  for  the  church  at  seven  in  the 
evening,  and  a  reception  was  to  take  place  at  the  house 
immediately  after.  Julia  was  to  be  in  bridal  white  and  to 
be  attended  by  two  bridesmaids,  her  sister  Fanny  and  her 
cousin  Anna,  with  their  escorting  groomsmen.  One  or 
two  of  Mr.  Calvert's  relations  were  coming,  and  also  his 
most  intimate  friend,  Mr.  Howe,  a  New  York  clerk  like 
himself,  whom  he  had  chosen  for  "  first  groomsman  "  (as 
in  those  days  the  best  man  was  called),  and  with  whom,  in 
consequence,  and  as  Mrs.  Dexter  was  fully  aware,  Miss 
Fanny  would  have  to  walk  up  the  church  aisle,  and  next 
whom  to  stand  throughout  the  reception.  Altogether,  an 
ambitious  programme  for  simple  Belmont. 

Mrs.  Dexter's  intimates  knew  that  either  she  never  could 
or  never  would  get  together  supper  enough  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  so,  the  week  beforehand,  they  good-naturedly 
combined  to  make  sure  that  the  feast  should  shame  neither 


26  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Belmont  housekeeping  nor  Belmont  hospitality.  Every- 
body had  been  invited  and  ever>^body  came,  though,  since 
it  was  Mrs.  Dexter,  quite  as  much  to  criticise  as  to  enjoy. 

And,  alas  !  the  wedding  was  not  a  success  either  spec- 
tacular or  social.  In  the  first  place,  it  rained  dismally. 
In  the  second,  though  the  bride  was  correct  in  white  silk 
and  tulle  veil,  a  faultless  bridal  toilette  was  quite  beyond 
even  Mrs.  Dexter.  The  Belmont  glass  of  fashion  had' 
never  seen  one,  consequently  she  could  not  reflect  it. 
The  dress  was  not  becomingly  made,  and  the  veil  was  too 
short  and  too  scanty  and  very  awkwardly  put  on.  The 
pretty  Julia  had  never  looked  less  well,  if  indeed  she  had 
ever  looked  so  ill  in  her  life ;  and  the  bridegroom,  a  con- 
noisseur from  seeing  the  best-dressed  women  in  the  country 
constantly  passing  in  street  costume  before  him,  was  in 
secret  quite  seriously  annoyed.  So  true  it  is  that  nothing  is 
perfectly  done  that  is  not  easily  done — done  without  effort. 

The  youthful  pair  indulged  in  a  short  wedding  journey, 
and  then  returned  to  the  city,  where  they  established  them- 
selves in  two  rooms  in  a  high-class  boarding  house,  and  set 
out  to  be  happy.  And  very  happy  they  were,  for  Julia  en- 
joyed being  worshipped,  and  for  a  long  time  it  was  sweet 
to  the  ardent  young  husband  to  worship.  Even  after  six 
months  the  bloom  and  the  dew  were  yet  upon  the  wonder 
and  the  sweetness  of  the  ''Thou,"  when,  as  the  holidays 
approached,  Mrs.  Dexter  realized  the  fond  dream  of  her 
life  by  actually  finding  herself  on  a  visit  to  her  New  Jeru- 
salem, or,  rather,  as  she  pronounced  New  Jerusalem — 
"Noo  Yawk!" 

She  had  been  telling  everybody  since  the  wedding  how 
happy  Julia  was,  and  that  there  was  "■  only  one  thing"  the 
child  wanted,  viz :   to  see  her  mother. 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  27 

*  •  Every  letter  I  get,  it  is  '  Now  mother,  do  come  on  and 
.1  ay  with  us,  if  it  is  only  for  a  week  !  Frank  is  as  anxious 
<o  see  you  as  I  am.  Mrs.  Ford  has  a  pleasant  room  that 
she  can  give  you,  and  we  will  do  everything  to  make  you 
have  a  good  time. ' — You  see,  Frank  is  away  all  day  at  his 
business,  and  Jule  has  a  good  many  lonely  hours,  I  know, 
though  she  doesn't  say  much  about  it.  So  it  really  seems 
as  if  it  was  my  duty  to  go,  though  I  hate  to  leave  Mr, 
Dexter  and  the  children.  Still,"  clearing  her  throat  and 
posing  her  hand  affectedly  on  her  ample  chest,  "  my  lungs 
trouble  me  a  good  deal  this  winter,  and  I  feel  that  a  change 
of  climate  is  almost  imperative-a-h. "  (Among  Mrs.  Dex- 
ter's  company  manners  was  the  ending  of  her  paragraphs 
with  a  long-drawn  **  a-h  "  and  smile  of  ineffable  elegance.) 

And  so  this  devoted  wife  and  mother  had  torn  herself 
away  and  had  come  to  spend  a  few  weeks  with  her  beloved 
Julia  in  the  enchanted  land  of  her  almost  better-loved  New 
York,  and  oh  !  that  first  step  on  the  sidewalk  of  a  great 
city — that  crisp,  strange,  magnetic,  intoxicating  thrill ! 
Was  ever  mortal  vouchsafed  a  morrient  of  greater  ecstasy 
than  Mrs.  Dexter  when  first  that  stony  surface  kissed  her 
little  foot  !  Fortunate  being — to  attain  the  insatiate  long- 
ing of  years  before  she  was  too  old  or  too  discouraged  to 
enjoy  it ! 

The  New  York  of  that  day,  by  the  way,  was  sympathetic 
to  Americans.  The  dingy,  odious,  omnipresent  English 
sparrow,  pert  incarnation  of  low-born  alien  aggressiveness, 
had  not  then  displaced  the  lovely,  stately  American  doves 
that  hovered  everywhere  about  the  ways,  sacred  emblems 
of  a  Holy  Spirit  not  yet  grieved  afar.  Its  cheerful  squares 
had  not  much  to  show  besides  their  tree-lined,  vine-draped 


28  A  Ell'  YORK.    A    SVMPHONJC  Sl'UDi. 

rows  of  clean  brown-stone  houses  and  the  '* pleasant  and 
pretty  people  "  that  lived  in  thetn ;  but  it  was  still  at  one 
with  itself,  with  its  good  clearly  on  the  top  and  its  bad  de- 
cidedly at  the  bottom. 

Not  then  did  the  thick  miasms  of  Europe  brood  heavily 
over  a  monstrous  and  soul-torpid  town,  nor  was  New  York 
as  yet  [hat  tragic  jumble  of  irreconcilable  antagonisms  into 
which  at  this  writing  (1892)  she  has  evolved.  The  logic  of 
events  had  hardly  begun  to  work  out  the  certain  results  of 
the  treachery  to  patriotism  which  was  even  then  the  fixed 
policy  of  her  master-minds — that,  namely,  of  getting  rich 
while  the  public  weal  takes  care  of  itself. 

In  1852,  New  Yorkers  were  not  jammed  into  dense  miles 
of  flats,  tenements,  boarding  houses  and  hotels  parted  only 
by  a  narrow  central  line  of  "palatial  mansions"  deserted 
for  one-half  the  year.  The  money-centre  of  this  cotmtry 
could  still  afford  a  genuine  residence-quarter  of  genuine 
homes,  wherein,  the  bisecting  Broadway  apart,  Trade  did 
not  obtrude  her  brazen  front  at  every  turn  as  now  she  in- 
sistingly  does.  Peanut  and  fruit  stands  ad  nauseam,  and  a 
liquor  saloon  every  instant,  did  not  keep  eating  and  drink- 
ing everlastingly  in  consciousness.  Elevated  roads  did 
not  block  the  vistas  nor  electric  wires  cobweb  the  air. 
The  Jew  was  not  yet  a  feature,  the  German  w^as  not  yet  a 
brother,  the  Irishman  was  not  yet  the  master,  nor  yet  had 
New  York,  betrayed  by  a  supine  and  divided  Protestant 
clergy,  sacrificed  to  them  her  American  Sunday.  On  that 
day  business  shutters  were  up  and  business  blinds  were 
down,  the  streets  were  quiet  save  for  the  soft  church-bell 
sounds  that  echoed  over  them,  and  empty  but  of  festively- 
dressed  citizens  going  to  honor  God — for  women  had  not 
then  found  out  that  it  was  "bad  form"  to  attend  their 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  29 

Maker's  receptions  on  Sundays  in  clothes  quite  as  good  as 
those  they  wore  to  each  other's  receptions  on  week  days. 

True  that  the  street  centres  were  fearfully  dirty — but 
one  was  not  so  very  conscious  of  it,  for  Croton  water  was 
unlimited,  and  it  was  the  general  custom  to  hose  off  the 
sidewalks  daily,  so  that  at  least  one  did  not  have  to  tread, 
as  afterward  for  so  many  years,  upon  a  stained  and  shock- 
ing surface  carpeted  more  or  less  with  dust  and  slatternly 
with  papers  and  chips ! 

In  fine,  if  there  were  nothing  about  the  place  artisti- 
cally beautiful,  neither  was  there  anything  painfully  dis- 
quieting. The  stamp  of  intelligence,  refinement  and  self- 
respect,  of  Americanism  and  of  religion,  was  as  vividly 
upon  that  long-ago  New  York  as  is  the  deep  brand  of  the 
reverse  elements  now.  Art,  architecture  and  music  were 
scarcely  born.  Central  Park  and  the  multitude  of  summer 
resources  were  not.  Pictures  and  picture-galleries  and  even 
theatres  were  few  and  far  between,  and  bric-a-brac  and 
decorative  firms  were  absolutely  unimagined.  There  was 
little  to  see  and  to  enjoy.  But  what  there  was  at  least  was 
unalloyed — was  not  set  in  the  plundering  and  demoralizing 
Irish  rule  with  which  now  for  a  generation  New  York  has 
discounted  her  multiform  advantages!  Among  American 
cities  it  was  easily  the  distingue  city,  as  its  high-strung, 
graceful,  masterful  people,  less  intellectual  than  percep- 
tive, and  extraordinarily  executive,  were  easily  the  dis- 
tingue people. 

But  what  have  they  done  with  themselves,  those  men  of 
elegance  and  power  that  one  used  so  often  to  remark — 
for  one  might  almost  as  well  seek  for  such  in  one's  walks 
as  for  the  fabled  phoenix  or  the  extinct  dodo  ?    Inquiring 


30  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

about  this  when  I  went  there  to  live  in  1884,  the  reply 
was — ''Gentlemen  now  very  generally  go  down  to  busi- 
ness in  hansoms  and  coupes" — which  perhaps  accounts  for 
their  disappearance  from  public  view.  The  multitudinous 
man  one  does  meet  bears  the  fresh,  natty,  well-dressed 
New  York  stamp  and  he  is  faithful  to  the  admirable  fash- 
ion from  which  New  Yorkers  have  never  swerved,  of 
acknowledging  the  beard,  if  at  all,  only  by  the  moustache; 
but  so  many  are  plump,  pink-tinted,  looking  as  if  they  fed 
physically  on  foie  gras  and  mentally  on  "  Town  Topics" 
and  written  all  over  with  self-indulgence,  that  one  won- 
ders in  regret  whether  the  thin  American  cheek,  so  dis- 
ciplined, so  romantic,  the  nervous  spare  American  hand, 
the  general  spartan  leanness — all  so  manful,  so  adorable, 
have  forever  vanished  from  the  American  metropolis 
before  the  broad  faces,  the  pudgy  palms,  the  fat  legs  of 
the  continental  European? 

And  if  the  New  York  men  are  transformed,  so  are  the 
New  York  women.  For  that  ravishing  fine  fleiir  of 
American  womanhood  whoch  was  once  the  topmost  crest 
of  the  high-bred  city,  one  looks  almost  in  vain !  If  there 
are  as  many  "ladies"  in  proportion  as  there  used  to  be, 
amid  the  billowing  crowds  of  eager  shoppers,  one  cannot 
now  discern  them.  They  do  not  give  the  tone  to  their 
fellows  as  once  they  did.  Like  the  sea-anemone,  their 
exquisiteness  has  shrunk  into  itself.  In  Mrs.  Dexter's 
time  the  airy,  silk-clad  matrons  and  maidens,  often  with 
their  attendant  cavaliers,  to  the  stranger  made  Broadway 
a  perpetual  romance.  It  was  the  hey-day — ^the  golden 
prime  of  the  New  York  girl ! 

Our  fathers  were  wont  to  dwell  upon  and  lament  the 


I 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  31 

delicacy  and  fragility  of  the  American  feminine  type. 
Their  sons  may  well  lament  the  coarser  foreign  tide  that 
has  overwhelmed  it.  One  may  now  spend  hours  in  New 
York  shops  and  streets  and  remark  not  one  ideally  beau- 
tiful face — a  thing  in  Mrs.  Dexter's  time  almost  impossible. 
In  short,  considered  in  its  every-day  aspect,  the  human 
element  which  to  the  poetic  eye  was  once  New  York's 
most  fascinating  feature,  has  come  to  be  the  most  alarm- 
ing expression  of  the  word  that  is  written  all  over  the 
metropolis  from  the  Harlem  to  the  Battery — over  her 
measureless  miles  of  monotonous  tenements,  over  her 
Brobdignagian  sky-scrapers  which  shoulder  so  far,  far 
above  her  churches,  over  her  treeless,  turfless  sidewalks, 
over  her  gross,  full-fed  population — the  special  word  of 
the  Jew,  Satan's  own  dearest  and  deadliest  word,  the  most 
terrible  word  that  Christendom  can  frame,  because  it  is 
the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven — 

"  MATERIALISM.'' 

"The  beginning  of  the  end"  did  I  say?  Nay,  did  not 
the  end  come  when  in  1891,  on  her  then  latest,  loftiest 
tower,  more  than  three  hundred  feet  in  the  air,  New  York 
enpinnacled  a  nude  and  gilded  huntress  who  proclaims  to 
every  eye  that  the  region  of  which  she  is  the  tutelary 
genius  has  flung  to  the  winds  the  feminine  ideals  no 
less  of  the  Pagan  Diana  than  of  the  Christian  Ma- 
donna ! 

Since  Art  began  never  was  such  a  "thing  dreamed  of  as 
an  unclothed  woman  crowning  a  city — yet  summer  crowds 
nightly  sit  beneath  the  abashed  stars  and  this  disrobed 
goddess  while  almost  equally  denuded  chorus  girls  give  one 
of  those  decadent  "shows"  wanting  which  for  his  evening 


32  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

recreation  the  New  York  "sumrrter"  man  would  feel  him- 
self defrauded  indeed! 

The  favorite  New  York  architect  proposed,  and  the 
favorite  New  York  sculptor  designed  this  bronze  sacrilege 
against  one  of  the  hallowed  traditions  of  the  race,  for 
American  artists,  like  American  theatre  managers,  are 
mad  after  the  "nude," — a  plutocrat  who  hands  the  plate 
in  a  leading  church  is  one  of  the  chief  stockholders  of  the 
great  building  devoted  to  such  uses,  and  in  July,  1892,  in 
its  wide  amphitheatre  an  army  of  young  ''Christian  En- 
deavorers"  sang  their  hymns  and  listened  to  their  preachers 
every  evening  for  nearly  a  week,  while  on  the  theatre- 
stage  separated  from  them  by  a  partition,  and  also  on  the 
roof-garden  over  their  heads,  this  "  burlesque  "  exploita- 
tion of  American  girlhood  was  going  on. 

And  in  this  selfsame  1892  the  popular  divine  across  the 
street  from  the  "Garden  " — with  the  usual  vigilance  and 
consistency  of  the  so-called  "  Christian  "  ministry,  is  in- 
voking the  law  only  against  hidden  horrors,  and  arousing 
the  public  only  against  the  evildoers  of  Tammany  Hall! 


The  decorous  yet  charming  New  York  of  Mrs.  Dexter's 
day,  gayly  confident  in  its  present  and  totally  blind  to  its 
future,  proved  to  her  devout  country  adorer  so  enthralling 
that  the  "few  weeks"  had  lengthened  into  five  months 
before  Belmont  saw  4:he  lady  again.  "Julia  could  not  bear 
to  hear  of  my  leaving  her,"  she  said  to  her  callers  on 
her  return.  "  If  you  want  to  see  devotion  I  wish  you  could 
see  Frank  Calvert  I  Really,  he  allows  Julia  to  do  nothing! 
They  have  a  little  wall-closet  in  their  room  in  which  he 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  33 

always  keeps  wines  and  delicacies,  and  regularly  every 
night  he  sets  the  table  and  gets  out  a  little  supper  and 
attends  to  everything  himself!  I  tell  Jule  he  is  spoiling 
her,  but  she  laughs  and  says  she  is  quite  willing  to  be  waited 
on.     He  just  worships  her — a-h  !  " 

It  was  quite  true  that  Julia  had  been  very  glad  to  have 
her  mother  stay  on  and  on.  She  was  intensely  sociable, 
and  loved  to  spend  long  hours  in  talking  and  being  sympa- 
thized with. 

It  was  nice  to  have  her  mother  to  go  about  the  shops 
with — "  stores  "  they  called  them  in  those  days — and  to  do 
all  her  and  Calvert's  mending  and  be  always  there  to 
appeal  to  in  all  sorts  of  little  decisions.  Moreover,  Julia 
was  devotedly  attached  to  her  mother  and  very  dependent 
upon  her ;  and,  indeed,  who,  after  all,  would  ever  love  her 
again  as  this  fond  mother  did? 

Seeing  how  Julia  enjoyed  the  visit — when,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  every  week,  Mrs.  Dexter  Would  say,  "  Well,  my 
dear  children,  I  must  go  on  Wednesday,  and  not  trespass 
on  your  hospitality  any  longer," — the  male  "  child  "  would 
answer  good  humoredly :  "  Oh,  never  mind,  mother !  Stay 
another  week.  You'll  make  it  all  right  by  boarding  Julia 
in  the  summer," — and,  of  course,  Mrs.  Dexter  would  stay. 
The  "  pleasant  room  "  she  had  romanced  about  to  her  Bel- 
mont friends  was  only  the  cheapest  hall  bedroom  Mrs. 
Ford  had,  and  therefore  was  not  very  expensive ;  but  still, 
whenever  they  went  anywhere,  there  was  always  an  extra 
ticket  to  buy,  extra  omnibus  fare  to  pay,  an  extra  guest 
at  the  little  supper,  so  that  when  Calvert  at  last  put  her  on 
the  train  to  return  to  Belmont,  his  heart  felt  lighter  and 
his  purse  heavier  than  it  had  done  for  some  weeks.    He 


34  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

was  charmed  to 'have  his  ''little  darling"  as  he  fondly 
called  her,  and  his  little  parlor  again  all  to  himself.  Not 
only  had  it  been  vividly  borne  in  upon  him  after  the  first 
Mrs.  Dexter  fortnight  that  "  two  is  company  but  three  is 
a  crowd,"  but  he  even  caught  himself  wondering  whether 
or  not  his  devoted  mother-^in-law  was  just  the  least  little 
bit  of  a  sponge  ! 

To  do  her  justice,  Mrs.  Dexter  had  done  what  she  could 
to  save  him  extra  expense  in  evening  amusements,  by 
making  his  friend,  Mr.  Howe,  pay  for  her  as  often  as  she 
thought  prudent.  When  getting  up  a  party  for  the  theatre, 
for  instance,  she  would  laugh  and  say  in  Mr.  Howe's 
presence :  "  You  needn't  trouble  about  an  escort  for  me, 
Frank.  Mr.  Howe  will  be  my  beau !  " — upon  which  Mr. 
Howe  would  be  "  only  too  happy"  and  would  procure  and 
pay  for  Mrs.  Dextcr's  tickets  and  also  for  her  ice  cream 
after  the  play.  Of  course,  she  would  sit  next  to  him,  and 
as  a  reward  she  would  entertain  him  with  copious  accounts 
and  laudations  of  her  second  daughter,  Fanny. 

[Note. — The  foreging  description  of  New  York  between 
1884-1892,  and  which  held  good  until  the  reform  regime 
of  Mayor  Strong  in  1894-1897,  was  written  and  electro- 
typed  in  1892. 

Cambridge  y  1915.] 


CHAPTER  V. 


FANNY  DEXTER. 


Fanny  Dexter  was  only  fourteen  when  Mr.  Howe 
came  on  to  Belmont  to  act  as  Mr.  Calvert's  best  man,  and 
she  was  very  small  of  her  age.  But  that  was  nothing  to 
Mrs.  Dexter.  When  the  travellers  presented  themselves 
from  the  train,  Calvert  was  naturally  so  absorbed  in 
meeting  his  lady-love  that  Mrs.  Dexter  was  able,  without 
being  over-heard,  to  introduce  his  friend  to  "  our  second 
daughter,  Fanny,  Mr.  Howe ; — our  '  little  housekeeper  ' 
we  call  her-a-h." 

As  beauty  was  the  float  with  which  Mrs.  Dexter  had 
confidently  launched  her  eldest  girl  on  the  unknown 
ocean  of  the  great  world,  so  domesticity  was  to  be  the 
winning  card  for  the  second  one,  and  Mr.  Howe  was 
instantly  impressed  by  the  introduction  precisely  as  she 
meant  he  should  be.  In  a  few  years  he  would  be  quite 
rejtdy  for  a  wife,  as  he  was  already  doing  very  well,  and 
the  idea  of  an  unsophisticated  young  girl  with  simple  and 
domestic  tastes,  fell  refreshingly  and  assuringly  on  his 
urban  ear.  After  a  gay  evening  in  the  bright  and  cosy 
little  parlors,  as  he  undressed  at  night  he  thought  to  him- 
self: "  Since  Calvert  seems  to  have  found  such  a  treasure 
in  Julia,  why  shouldn't  I  think  of  little  Fanny  some 
day  ?  "  He  accordingly  took  her  out  to  drive  during  his 
stay  in  Belmont,  asked  her  to  be  his  partner  every  evening 


36  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

at  cards,  and  when  he  returned  to  New  York  subscribed  to 
the  New  York  Ledger  for  her  and  sent  her  from  his 
' '  store  * '  a  box  of  perfume  and  fancy  soap. 

This  budding  sentiment  it  was  that  Mrs.  Dexter  was  so 
careful  to  cultivate  during  her  New  York  visit.  Parts  of 
Fanny's  letters,  with  mysterious  reticence  of  other  parts  to 
heighten  the  effect,  were  read  to  him,  and  her  sprightli- 
ness,  amiability  and  housekeeping  tastes,  were  constantly 
commented  on.  Above  all,  he  himself  was  most  assid- 
uously flattered,  and  that  he  should  spend  his  next  sum- 
mer's vacation  in  Belmont  was  taken  as  a  matter  of  course. 

Her  winter's  work  thus  skillfully  accomplished,  Mrs. 
Dexter  buried  herself  again  in  the  country  to  live  for  many 
ensuing  months  on  city  memories  and  hopes.  But  though 
she  had  now  secured  a  solid  foothold  in  what  had  hitherto 
been  but  a  rainbow  castle  in  Spain,  she  none  the  less  strove 
also  for  a  higher  place  amid  the  disdained  realities  of 
Belmont. 

A  village  magnate  had  died  within  a  few  years,  and  his 
rather  pretentious  house,  together  with  a  modicum  of  the 
ground  on  which  it  stood,  was  for  sale.  Mrs.  Dexter  per- 
suaded her  husband  to  part  with  their  little  elm-shaded 
cottage  and  to  purchase  this  mansion  instead.  A  mortgage 
accomplished  it  for  them,  and  when  Julia  came  home  for 
her  first  summer  visit,  she  found  her  mother  triumphantly 
seated  on  another  round  of  ambition's  ladder,  and  for  the 
first  time  in  her  life,  the  mistress  of  an  establishment  not 
altogether  unworthy  of  a  social  leader  such  as  she  felt  her- 
self to  be. 

Nor  had  che  returned  from  the  city  empty-handed — 
thanks  to  her  own  genius  for  bargaining  and  for  getting 
little  offerings  both  from  the  present  and  from  the  hoped- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  37 

for  son-in-law ;  consequently  she  was  able  to  furnish 
one  of  her  parlors  with  lace  curtains  and  "  brocatelle  " 
damask  a  la  New  York,  though  to  afford  this,  she  had  to 
shut  up  the  other  and  larger  one  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  hall  and  ignore  it  completely. 

*'  Lord  !  "  said  the  village  wit  a-propos  of  this — ''  don't 
you  think  you  know  anything  about  the  furnishing  of  her 
house  from  that  one  room.  There's  more  management  in 
that  woman's  little  finger  than  in  all  the  rest  of  Belmont 
put  together.  Like  as  not,  every  chair  in  the  house  is  in 
that  south  parlor  of  hers,  but  if  you  should  take  a  fancy 
to  go  into  the  north  one,  before  you  could  say  *  Jack 
Robinson  !  '  she'd  have  'em  all  scuttled  in  there  somehow, 
and  you'd  think  they  all  belonged  there." 

However  this  may  have  been,  Mrs.  Dexter  assumed 
with  her  larger  quarters  a  much  more  magnificent  air  than 
formerly,  and  before  very  long  snubbed  one  of  her  best 
friends  who  was  living  in  a  house  precisely  like  her  old 
one,  and  who,  one  day,  was  half- laughingly  deprecating  its 
size  compared  with  Mrs.  Dexter's  present  grandeur,  with 
— *' Yes,  Mrs.  Farwell,  your  house  is  small,  but  you  bear 
it  beautifully!  " 

Ah,  how  that  remark  sank  into  the  sensitive  memory 
that  heard  it,  how  deeply  it  rankled  there,  what  a  secret 
but  intense  ambition  it  fired,  and  what  havoc  in  after  years 
its  contagion  wrought ! 

Mrs.  Dexter's  cup  fairly  ran  over  this  summer.  Besides 
the  prestige  of  the  larger  house,  her  beloved  Julia  was  with 
her,  looking  prettier  than  ever,  and  agitating  the  whole 
Episcopal  church  Sunday  after  Sunday  with  her  really 
exquisite  dressing.  Finally,  in  August,  the  gay  and  gallant 
Calvert  came  for  her,  bringing  Mr.  Howe  with  him,  and 


38  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  latter  was  so  devoted  to  Miss  Fanny  during  his  short 
visit,  that  all  Belmont  was  easily  made  aware  of  the 
inauguration  of  a  new  life-drama. 

Fanny  Dexter  resembled  her  sister  Julia  in  nothing,  but 
was  her  mother's  own  child  from  crown  to  toe.  Up  to 
fifteen  she  was  plain,  with  pale  cheeks,  large  pale  eyes  and 
straight  brown  hair,  a  wide  mouth,  a  little  pug  nose  and 
thin  arms.  She  was  as  merry  as  a  cricket,  as  trifling  as  a 
butterfly,  and  as  slippery  as  an  eel.  When  a  young  lady 
she  used  to  tell  with  great  glee  how  once  at  school,  for 
some  flagrant  mischief,  her  teacher  gave  her  a  blow 
upon  the  palm  with  a  ferule,  upon  which  she  fell  down  in 
an  apparent  dead  faint,  and  could  not  be  perfectly  revived 
until  she  was  taken  home — a  feat  that  not  only  gained  her 
a  holiday  but  frightened  the  teacher  so  effectually  that 
she  never  dared  attempt  to  discipline  her  again.  She 
could  dance  a  sailor's  hornpipe,  a  Highland  fling,  or  an 
Irish  jig,  make  herself  up  into  and  talk  like  a  little  old 
woman,  or  walk  on  her  stiffened  toes  like  a  ballet-dancer. 
She  was  very  jolly,  sociable,  and  a  natural  business-woman, 
helpful  to  her  busy  mother  in  her  housekeeping,  and 
equal  to  sudden  emergencies  where  Julia  would  have 
been  paralyzed. 

Mrs.  Dexter' s  mental  and  moral  flimsiness  did  not 
extend  to  her  capacity  for  affairs.  She  had  all  a  New 
England  woman's  ''  faculty,  "  and  was  a  shrewd  manager 
and  a  hard  worker.  She  was  a  thorough  needle-woman 
and  a  delicious  cook,  who  rose  early  and  went  to  bed  late 
and  ''eat  the  bread  of  carefulness  "  generally.  While  her 
daughters  were  growing  up  she  supplied  all  the  deficiencies 
of  her  one  second-rate  servant  herself,  spending  all  the 
time  not  required  by  her  needle   in  the  kitchen,   where 


NEW  YORK;   A    SYMPHOXJC  STUDY.  39 

Fanny  made  herself  useful  in  a  thousand  little  ways,  while 
Julia  sat  by  the  sitting-room  stove  in  a  calico  wrapper  and 
unkempt  hair,  gossipping  with  a  friend  or  poring  over  a 
book. 

In  truth  Fanny  was  a  capable  little  personage,  with  very 
definite  ideas  of  how  things  ought  to  be  done,  and  she 
announced  very  early  that  she  was  going  to  keep  her  house 
"very  neat,"  and  have  her  husband's  slippers  all  ready  for 
him  to  put  on  every  evening  when  he  came  home.  Her 
ruling  passion,  however,  was  pleasure,  and  her  simple  con- 
ception of  existence  was  to  get  the  utmost  pleasure  out  of 
it  that  she  could,  let  pay  for  it  who  would.  She  received 
Mr.  Howe's  attentions  and  presents  with  great  compla- 
cency, from  her  mother's  broad  hints  inferred  that  she 
might  marry  him  some  day,  and  at  his  request  corres- 
ponded with  him  most  amicably;  but  during  her  sixteenth 
year  she  flirted  none  the  less  with  the  ignorant  young  men 
in  the  village  stores  who  were  doing  duty  as  the  village 
beaux. 

The  three  or  four  youths  who  belonged  to  her  own  more 
exclusive  and  fastidious  circle  were  either  absent  at  their 
studies  or  betrothed  already ;  but  Fanny  loved  and  needed 
dancing  and  fun  so  much,  that  she  was  very  willing  to  take 
a  tgte-a-tete  sleigh-ride  to  a  neighboring  village  for  an  even- 
ing merry-making  with  almost  anybody,  and  if  her  escort's 
arm  were  suffered  to  remain  round  her  waist  during  much 
of  the  ride  home,  and  a  good-night  kiss  granted  at  the 
door,  why,  like  the  old-time  "  kissing-games  "  and  all  the 
rest  of  it,  it  was  nothing  more  than  the  custom,  forty  years 
ago,  in  all  unlettered  society,  and,  I  presume,  is  so  still — 
a  survival  from  the  pre-culture  days  when  the  highest  born 
youths  and  maidens  of  Europe  employed  their  vacant  wits 


40  A'£IV  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

when  together  in  the  same  way,  Nobody  had  ever  told 
Fanny  it  was  any  harm,  and  she  had  not,  like  her  sister  Julia, 
the  native  pride  and  reserve  to  make  her  withdraw  instinct- 
ively from  it.  She  was  practical,  material,  philistine 
throughout,  and  the  attitude  of  her  mind  toward  this,  as 
indeed  toward  pretty  much  everything  else  through  life,  was 
Hamlet's:  '' There's  nothing  good  or  bad,  but  thinking 
makes  it  so !  " 

These  peculiarly  unconventional  pleasures,  however, 
were  enjoyed  by  Miss  Fanny  only  while  her  managing 
mamma  was  away  on  her  second  visit  to  New  York,  and 
they  ended  with  that  lady's  return  ;  for  she  came  back  with 
the  decision  that  a  young  damsel  with  a  probable  city  fu- 
ture must  be  brought  into  shape  for  that  future,  and  conse- 
quently, that  Fanny  must  spend  the  next  two  years  at 
boarding-school. 

A  fashionable  New  York  boarding-school  would,  of 
course,  have  been  the  thing,  but  equally  of  course  it  was  pe- 
cuniarily out  of  the  question,  and  Mrs.  Dexter  could  not 
but  sigh  over  the  unkindness  of  fate  in  not  permitting  her 
to  manage  it.  Instead,  she  took  the  next  best  that  was 
open  to  her,  and  sent  Fanny  to  a  celebrated  establishment 
in  Troy,  hoping  that  a  course  of  study  and  accomplish- 
ments at  this  institution  would  bestow  upon  her  such  a 
prestige  and  finish  that  Mr.  Howe's  final  subjection  could 
not  fail. 

Did  Miss  Fanny  find  the  "Troy  Ladies'  Academy" 
dull?  Far  from  it.  In  the  same  town  was  a  scientific 
school  for  the  other  sex,  and  Fanny  and  one  or  two  con- 
genial schoolmates  had  full  scope  for  their  love  of  frolic 
and  flirtation,  in  letting  down  at  night  from  their  windows 
to  the  waiting  youths  below,  little  bags  containing  notes 


XEIV  YORK':   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  41 

which  made  appointments  for  clandestine  Saturday  meet- 
ings and  walks,  and  drawing  them  up  filled  with  bon-bons 
and  billet-doux  in  return.  She  learned  nothing,  of  course, 
but  in  the  first  nine  months  she  was  there  the  transforma- 
tion from  childhood  to  girlhood  performed  its  frequent 
miracle.  Her  cheeks  flushed  pink,  her  lips  turned  scarlet 
and  framed  her  extremely  white  and  regular  teeth  so  bril- 
liantly that  her  merry  and  ever-ready  smile  was  alluring  in 
its  beauty,  to  say  nothing  of  a  certain  coaxing  and  kind- 
ling look  she  involuntarily  added  to  it  when  she  wished  to 
make  an  impression ;  her  light  brown  hair  was  abundant 
and  always  perfectly  arranged ;  her  nose  grew  a  little 
straighter,  and  her  eyes  took  a  deei>er  shade,  and  though 
her  figure  was  too  short-waisted  and  a  trifle  square,  yet  she 
had  some  bust,  and  her  trig  little  bodice  suited  her  gay 
and  youthful  air  very  well. 

Just  at  this  time  Mr.  Howe  was  on  the  point  of  being 
made  a  junior  partner  in  the  large  importing  house  of 
fancy  goods  which  employed  him.  Like  his  friend,  Cal- 
vert, he  had  won  his  own  way  in  the  world  by  his  industr};, 
integrity  and  clearheadedness.  His  face  was  pale  and 
finely-cut ;  in  person  he  was  very  small  and  very  slender, 
and  if,  like  many  small  people,  he  was  artlessly  self-satis- 
fied, also  was  he  generous,  kindly,  pure  and  true  as  steel. 
Captivated  by  Fanny's  mirth  and  light-heartedness  and  by 
the  idea  of  her  housewifely  tastes,  and  thinking  her  a  little 
woodland  flower,  fresh  and  sweet — from  the  first  he  had 
taken  a  romantic  pleasure  in  attaching  himself  to  the  lively 
child  of  fourteen,  and  in  watching  what  he  fancied  her 
education  and  development. 

When,  therefore,  he  came  on  to  Belmont  to  see  her 
after  lier  first  year  at  school,  and   fonnd  her  so  much  ])ret- 


42  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

tier  than  she  had  promised  to  be ^ two  years  before;  when 
she  sang  to  him  her  little  songs  and  played  off  upon  him 
her  douce  and  mignonne  ways,  he  was  only  too  glad  to  be 
entirely  carried  away,  and  though  no  engagement  was 
announced  or  even  admitted  by  Mrs.  Dexter,  yet  imme- 
diately after  the  young  man's  return  to  New  York  a 
beautiful  solitaire  diamond  ring  found  its  way  to  Miss 
Fanny's  hand,  and  played  far  too  conspicuous  a  part  there 
for  the  Belmont  neighbors  to  believe  it  any  mere  pledge  of 
platonic  friendship. 

The  diamond  was  much  costlier  than  Julia's  betrothal 
ring,  for  Mr.  Howe's  income  was  double  what  Mr.  Cal- 
vert's had  been  at  a  similar  crisis.  The  two  men  got  each 
the  sister  that  was  least  suited  to  him.  The  pure,  high- 
minded,  romantic  Howe  would  much  better  have  matched 
the  clever  and  fastidious  Julia,  while  the  restless  and 
pleasure-loving  Fanny  would  equally  have  been  far  more 
enthralled  by  the  handsome,  forcible  Calvert.  Surely  the 
Genius  of  Sublunary  Marriage  should  be  represented  by  a 
captivating  woman  seated  in  a  chariot  drawn  by  a  hundred 
horses  whose  reins  she  wilfully  has  allowed  to  become  so 
inextricably  tangled  that  the  wrong  pairs  are  generally  try- 
ing to  pull  together,  and  all  are  more  or  less  rearing, 
plunging,  straining,  kicking,  balking,  or  backing,  while 
she  herself  sits  smiling  ironically  aloft  nor  exerts  one 
energy  to  help  the  poor  bewildered,  frantic  creatures  out ! 


CHAPTER  VI. 


A   NEW   YORKER. 


Mrs.  Dexter  refrained  from  announcing  the  engage- 
ment for  which  she  had  so  unremittingly  striven,  not  only 
because  it  was  not  the  country  fashion  to  do  so.  A  far 
more  potent  reason,  though  she  kept  it  locked  in  the  deep- 
est depths  of  her  bosom,  was,  that  after  Fanny's  return 
to  school,  another  matrimonial  possibility,  a  dazzling  pos- 
sibility, had  flashed  into  the  Belmont  horizon,  and  she 
would  not  publicly  pledge  her  daughter  to  the  old  love 
until  she  was  sure  the  girl  could  not  be  on  with  the  new. 

Harvey  Thayer  was  the  second  son  of  a  New  York 
broker  who  had  made  a  large  fortune,  it  is  said,  by 
"  turning  sharp  corners  in  business,"  and  whose  mother, 
the  illiterate  daughter  of  an  old  French  vegetable  hawker, 
had  become  an  heiress  from  the  rise  in  value  of  her 
father's  garden  in  the  upper  part  of  the  city.  The  son  in 
question  of  those  parents  was  not  "  hopeful "  by  any 
means.  With  a  father  a  mere  money-making  machine, 
with  a  mother  utterly  ignorant  and  weak,  with  superficial 
older  sisters  carrying  dress  not  to  extravagance  but  to 
mania,  and  knowing  himself  to  be  rich,  nothing  could 
induce  the  youth  to  study  or  to  make  any  useful  or  manly 
effort  of  any  kind.  He  began  to  smoke  when  he  was 
twelve,  he  was  no  novice  in  vice  at  sixteen,  and  at 
eighteen   his   mind   was   infantile,   his   body   completely 


44  iVi^^  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

enervated,  his  heart  withered  by  ^corrupt  experience  and 
his  cynicism  that  of  a  profligate. 

To  keep  him  from  entire  premature  ruin,  his  father,  in 
despair,  sent  him  up  to  the  Episcopal  minister  of  Belmont, 
Mr.  Gardner,  for  a  year.  Reprobate  though  she  knew 
him  to  be,  the  latter' s  keen  and  high-strung  wife  could  not 
help  very  soon  confessing  herself  fond  of  Harvey  Thayer. 
Below  the  middle  height  of  men,  he  was  well  though 
slenderly  shaped,  his  hands  and  feet  effeminately  small, 
and  grace  the  characteristic  of  his  person  and  address,  as 
melancholy  was  of  his  face.  The  latter — framed  in  pale 
brown  silky  hair — with  its  olive  hue,  its  dark  grey  eyes 
and  its  voluptuous  mouth,  was  to  most  girls  first  peculiar, 
then  interesting,  then  irresistibly  attractive  as  only  that 
beauty  is  which  reveals  itself  point  by  point  and  never 
wholly  unveils  until  it  finds  its  victims  in  its  power,  when 
it  draws  their  gaze  as  the  magnet  does  the  iron,  even 
though  it  draw  their  hearts  out  with  it.  When  known,  the 
effect  of  Harvey  Thayer's  face  was  that  of  a  chord  of 
music,  and  the  charm  of  that  chord  was  in  its  sadness — 
sadness  resulting,  not  indeed  from  any  outside  ills,  for  he 
had  none,  but  from  the  vacuity  of  his  mind,  the  empti- 
ness of  his  heart,  the  satiety  of  his  life.  He  did  not  long. 
He  could  not  love.  His  French  descent  had  stamped  his 
face  with  poetry  and  art,  his  nature  was  gentle  and  refined, 
he  might  have  been  pure  and  beneficent.  He  was  so  fond 
of  babies  and  children  as  to  seem  perfectly  happy  when 
amusing  Mrs.  Gardner's  little  ones,  and  he  was  as  con- 
tented with  the  tiny  room  and  simple  fare  she  gave  him  as 
though  his  New  York  home  were  not  a  sumptuous  residence 
in  the  then  high  fashion  of  Twenty-third  Street ;  buthis mis- 
taken bringing  up  had  blighted  his  manhood,  and  he  knew  it. 


A'£PV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  45 

He  vaguely  felt  himself  to  be  insignificant  and  ignorant 
and  bad,  but  he  was  too  self-indulgent  and  morally 
languid  to  reform.  He  dwelt  in  a  perpetual  discourage- 
ment of  spirit  which,  while  too  negative  to  be  called 
suffering,  yet  gave  an  impression  of  melancholy  to  girls 
too  ignorant  or  inexperienced  to  rat^  him  at  his  true 
value.  Voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  his  face,  his  man- 
ner, appealed  to  them  for  sympathy,  and  only  too 
skillful  was  he  in  turning  that  easily-won  sympathy  to 
account. 

For  little  as  Harvey  Thayer  knew  of  books,  his  mastery 
of  the  feminine  heart  amounted  to  genius,  and  he  was  as 
finished,  artistic  and  successful  a  flirt  as  a  man  can  be 
who  has  none  of  the  muses,  save  Terpsichore,  to  help  him. 
One  definite  aim  and  ambition,  though  a  secret  one,  he 
had.  It  was  to  marry  into  some  old  New  York  family, 
and  so  become  identified  with  the  ''best"  New  York 
society,  for  his  father  was  the  merest  parvenu,  and  had 
no  social  recognition,  while  his  sisters  had  with  difficulty 
attained  even  the  outermost — the  ''rich  but  common" 
circle  of  the  world  of  fashion.  It  may  be  judged,  therefore, 
how  small  was  the  chance  that  he  would  ever  think  of 
Miss  Fanny  Dexter,  a  little  country  girl  whose  sister  had 
lately  married  a  New  York  retail  dry-goods  clerk,  as  his 
possible  matrimonial  future. 

Nevertheless,  the  most  flattering  visions  floated  before  Mrs. 
Dexter' s  maternal  ambition.  Great  indeed  was  her  excite- 
ment at  hearing  that  during  her  winter  absence  in  New 
York,  no  paltry  retail  clerk,  but  the  son  of  a  Wall  Street 
capitalist,  had  actually  come  to  study  in  Belmont  !  She 
looked  at  him  every  Sunday  in  church  with  admiring  and 
longing  eyes,  made  Mr.  Gardner  bring  him  to  call,  and  as 


46  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

soon  as  Fanny  came  home  from  her  summer  vacation,  one 
or  two  young  people  were  invited  to  tea,  and  Mr.  Thayer 
with  them. 

Quite  surprised  to  find  in  a  quiet  little  puritan  place 
where  cards  and  dancing  seemed  almost  a  sin,  an  easy, 
pleasant  house  where  he  could  waltz,  play  whist  and 
euchre  and  talk  ad  libitum  to  a  gay  and  coquettish  young 
girl  in  fetching  corn-colored  muslin  who  was  supposed 
to  be  engaged  but  was  quite  as  accessible  as  though  she 
were  not — the  New  Yorker  enjoyed  his  evening  very 
much.  At  parting  Mrs.  Dexter  said:  *'Do  come  in 
often,  Mr.  Thayer,  and  take  a  hand  at  whist.  You  play 
so  well  that  you're  quite  an  acquisition,  and  we  play  cards 
every  evening." 

Mr.  Thayer  professed  himself  charmed  to  be  allowed  the 
privilege,  and  within  a  week  had  indeed  made  himself  at 
Mrs.  Dexter' s  most  completely  at  home.  Mrs.  Gardner 
soon  perceived  it  and  said  to  her  husband:  "Now  that 
Mrs.  Dexter  has  got  hold  of  him,  there  is  no  use  in  our 
trying  to  do  him  any  good,"  which  was  a  mistake,  for 
Harvey  had  a  sincere  liking  and  esteem  for  the  Gardners 
and  cared  not  a  fig  for  the  ridiculous  woman  whom  he  saw 
through  perfectly,  and  delighted  to  sit  and  quiz  by  the 
half  hour.  For  all  that,  her  house  was  precisely  suited  to 
his  idle  taste  and  torpid  capacity,  and  as  his  only  amuse- 
ment in  life  was  to  build  love-castles  and  batter  them 
down  again,  he  proceeded  to  pass  a  very  agreeable,  and, 
all  temptation  to  vice  being  absent,  in  his  opinion  a  very 
virtuous  summer. 

Most  young  men,  I  am  glad  to  believe,  would  have  had 
prohibitory  scruples  about  flirting  with  a  girl  with  an 
engagement  ring  on  her  finger,  and  to  whom  every  post 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY  47 

brought  long  love  letters,  and  many  an  express,  love  gifts; 
but  where  flirting  was  concerned,  Harvey  Thayer  had  no 
honor.  To  make  every  attractive  girl  he  met  in  love 
with  him,  if  thereby  an  emotion,  an  excitement  of  any 
kind  were  to  be  gained,  was  his  deliberate  principle. 
And  certainly  Fanny  Dexter  was  not  an  unwilling  victim. 
For  the  next  two  months  she  bestowed  no  more  thought 
on  her  fiance  than  was  necessary  to  send  short  little 
answers  once  or  twice  a  week  to  his  voluminous  epistles. 
Indeed,  Harvey  Thayer  had  hardly  known  her  a  fortnight 
when  he  found  her  one  evening  reading  one  of  the  latter 
on  the  front  door-step  and  had  the  assurance  to  say 
to  her : 

''  Put  up  that  trash  and  come  out  and  take  a  walk  with 
me.     You  know  you  don't  care  for  it." 

Fanny  colored  a  little  but  laughed  and  retorted — 
''  That's  all  you  know  about  it,  Mr.  Impudence  !  I  don't 
think  I  ever  confessed  to  you  what  I  cared  for.  I  certainly 
don't  care  to  go  to  walk  with^<?// !  " 

"■  Why  have  you  done  it  three  times  then?  " 

*'0h,  because  I  love  to  be  amused,  and  there's  no  one 
else  to  amuse  me." 

''  Then  come  and  be  amused  now,  or  I  won't  come 
again  for  a  week." 

"Thank  you!  I'll  try  to  survive  your  absence.  But 
you  can't  stay  away — you  know  you  can't." 

"You  think  so?  Then  we'll  see.  Good  evening," 
and  lifting  his  hat  he  turned  and  sauntered  down  the  slop- 
ing path  to  the  street  gate.  He  would  have  kept  his 
threat  (stern  discipline  being  his  rule  in  flirtation  as  it  is 
with  all  masters  of  the  art),  but  that  after  the  third  deserted 
and  dismal   evening  Fanny  began   writing  him    coaxing 


48  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

little  notes,  so  that  on  the  fifth  he  condescended  to  re-ap- 
pear.     But  she  never  refused  hirA  again. 

This  was  the  only  approach  to  a  quarrel  they  had. 
Like  two  butterflies  they  laughed,  danced  and  when  alone 
caressed  away  the  fleeting  hours,  not  even  Harvey's  most 
melancholy  mood  sufficing  to  draw  a  cloud  over  Fanny's 
liveliness,  or  to  soften  her  into  sentiment.  So  Harvey  did 
not  enjoy  it  as  keenly — it  was  not  to  him  so  satisfactory  an 
experience — so  completely  a  love- idyl,  as  the  one  of  the 
previous  summer  at  Newport,  when,  at  the  end  of  a 
passionate  affair,  during  which,  in  true  flirt-fashion,  he  had 
won  maiden  confessions  and  kisses  without  offering  himself, 
he  had  had  the  luxury  of  standing  cool  and  calm  as  a 
young  Rhadamanthus  while  a  sweet  "  Margie  "  of  sixteen, 
with  disordered  hair  and  agonized  face,  was  on  her 
knees  before  him,  pleading  vainly  for  pardon  for  some 
little  offence  to  which  he  had  purposely  provoked  her,  so 
that  he  might  be  able  to  reiterate  ruthlessly  that  he  had 
"lost  his  confidence  in  her  and  that  it  could  never  be 
restored  !  ' ' 

Fanny,  in  fact,  gave  his  vanity  no  such  satisfaction,  for 
though  their  evening  strolls  and  stolen  kisses  had  not  been 
few,  and  though  she  felt  that  all  the  heart  she  had  to  give 
was  Harvey  Thayer's,  she  was  yet  cool-headed  enough  to 
realize  that  he  had  neither  asked  her  to  marry  him  nor 
frankly  declared  that  he  loved  her.  So  she  laughed  him  a 
good-bye  when  she  went  off  to  school  again,  and  never 
thought  of  such  a  thing  as  letting  go  the  good  honest  bird 
she  had  in  hand  for  the  delusive  charmer  in  the  bush, 
charm  he  never  so  wisely.  Harvey's  melting  sugar-plums 
were  indeed  delicious,  but  they  were  not  the  equivalent  of 
Mr.  Howe's  hard  dollars. 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  49 

Mrs.  Dexter  was  not  discouraged,  however.  She  put 
off  her  winter  flitting  to  New  York  until  January,  that  she 
might  be  at  home  to  arrange  a  visit  from  Fanny  and  one 
of  her  school-mates  for  the  holidays.  The  latter  was  a 
young  girl  from  Cincinnati  of  such  exceptional  beauty  that 
some  great  artist  should  have  painted  her  as  the  ''  Light  of 
the  Harem"  or  a  Mohammedan  houri.  She  had  a  round 
baby  face  through  whose  clear  brunette  her  cheek  flamed 
like  an  ardent  rose.  The  delicious  curves  of  her  pouting 
and  scarlet  lips  parted  brilliantly  over  teeth  like  pearls; 
her  little  nose  was  perfect ;  her  lambent  orient  eyes  opened 
under  delicately  pencilled  arches,  and  her  dusky  hair 
shaped  a  Greek  brow  and  a  most  dainty  head.  Not  only 
was  her  face  faultless.  Her  figure,  though  she  was  not 
tall,  was  equally  so ;  and  morever,  within  her  beautiful 
throat  slept  the  rich  voice  of  a  prima-donna.  Nature 
grew  tired  only  at  her  hands  and  feet,  which  were  not  so 
small  and  exquisite  as  the  rest  of  her  charms  demanded. 
In  all  costumes,  in  all  attitudes,  whether  in  carefullest 
evening  toilette  or  with  her  hair  screwed  on  top  of  her 
head  preparatory  to  a  bath, — morning,  noon  and  night, 
Isabel  Eaton  was  equally  beautiful — always,  unchangeably, 
the  same. 

But,  like  many  great  beauties,  she  was  so  inert,  so 
passive,  that  her  gifts  went  comparatively  for  nothing. 
The  idolized  and  only  daughter  of  her  parents,  and  loving 
them  too  most  loyally,  she  yet  so  rarely  wrote  to  them 
that  at  least  once  a  month  the  principal  of  the  school 
w^ould  receive  from  them  an  anxious  telegram  inquiring 
how  she  was.  She  was  not,  like  Fanny,  light-minded. 
It  would  have  been  impossible  to  her  to  descend  to  flirting 
with  two  men  at  once  as  Fanny  was  always  doing;  but 


50  Ar£^  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

(again  like  great  beauties)  she  was  not  fastidious  in  men, 
was  easily  pleased,  and  changed  easily  from  one  admirer  to 
another. 

Mrs.  Dexter  felt  almost  sure  that  if  Harvey  Thayer  were 
not  serious  with  Fanny  he  would  fall  in  love  with  this 
peerless  creature,  and  thus  marrying  Fanny's  intimate 
friend,  the  Dexters  might  become  at  least  outside  members 
of  his  fashionable  New  York  circle.  But  Mr.  Thayer  and 
Miss  Eaton  did  not  in  the  least  feel  each  other's  fascina- 
tions. Harvey  was,  in  truth,  amazed  at  her  beauty,  and 
began  his  usual  insinuating  advances.  But  the  young  lady 
was  so  accustomed  to  explicit  adoration,  that  his  flirtatious 
nuances  were  lost  upon  her,  nor  would  she  have  brooked 
the  little  insolences  and  brutalities  that  conquered  Fanny ; 
besides  which,  she  was  so  thoroughly  lazy  and  gentle  herself 
that  a  man  of  the  same  type  did  not  much  attract  her. 
Instead,  her  maiden  fancy  fastened  itself  upon  the  only 
intellectual  bachelor  in  the  place,  an  interesting  but  penni- 
less young  lawyer  just  home  from  his  studies,  who  surren- 
dered instantly  and  absolutely  in  two  evenings. 

Harvey  therefore  remained  externally  true  to  the  com- 
paratively angular  and  irregular  but  piquante  Fanny,  and 
internally  true  to  the  as  yet  unknown  young  lady  of  his 
own  city,  whose  blue  blood  he  hoped  one  day  to  incorpo- 
rate with  his  own.  In  our  complicated  modern  era  of 
professional  beauties  and  married  belles  he  might  have 
thought  best  to  decide  otherwise;  for  if  anything  could 
procure  for  a  rich  parvenu,  distinction  in  the  contemporary 
"smart "  world  of  New  York  and  London,  it  would  be  to 
enter  it  with  such  a  vision  on  his  arm  as  Isabel  Eaton,  a 
veritable  human  rose,  feminine  roundness  and  softness 
and  sweetness  in  its  quintessence  ! 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  51 

The  young  people  had  a  merry  fortnight  of  village  win- 
ter gayety,  during  which  Mr.  Thayer  was  devoted  to 
Fanny,  and  had  as  many  sudden  and  mysterious  interviews 
with  her  in  the  hall  or  dining-room  and  as  many  sleigh- 
rides  a  deuxy  as  though  he  and  not  Mr.  Howe  had  been 
engaged  to  her.  But  when  the  holidays  were  over,  all  the 
love-dreams  dissolved  without  more  practical  sequence 
than  the  frost- pictures  on  the  window-panes  that  accom- 
panied them.  The  young  lawyer,  indeed,  was  only  too  des- 
perately in  earnest,  but  great  beauties  are  rarely  impulsive, 
and  Miss  Eaton  would  promise  nothing  more  than  that  she 
would  return  once  more  to  Belmont.  The  girls  went  back 
to  school  precisely  as  they  had  left  it,  and  when  at  the  end 
of  her  allotted  two  years  Fanny  made  her  last  joyous 
adieux  to  books  and  the  Troy  Ladies*  Academy,  she  found 
no  Harvey  to  welcome  her  back  to  Belmont. 

And  he  had  gone  without  a  sign — disappeared  as  com- 
pletely as  the  balloon  that  melts  in  the  sky.  He  never 
corresponded  with  his  lady-loves — in  the  first  place  because 
he  could  not  spell  without  a  dictionary;  in  the  second, 
because  written  love  would  have  been  far  more  tangible 
than  anything  he  ever  permitted  himself  to  bestow  upon 
them  ;  in  the  third,  because  a  month  rarely  elapsed  between 
the  ending  of  an  old  flirtation  and  the  beginning  of  a  new 
one.  After  parting  he  generally  received  from  one  to 
three  passionate  epistles,  and  there,  for  him,  the  affair 
ended.  He  had  had  the  fun  of  building  his  love-castle 
and  knocking  it  down. ,  What  matter  to  him  if  the  poor 
little  maiden  heart  within  was  all  bestrewn  with  ruin  and 
desolation.  Never  even  by  word  or  look  had  he  tempted 
innocence  or  taken  advantage  of  the  abandonment  or  the 
ignorance  of  those  virgin  loves,  and  that,  he  thought,  was 


52  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

virtue.  And  so,  compared  with  the  modern  club-man  who 
devotes  himself  to  fascinating  young  married  women  and 
making  them  as  disloyal  to  their  husbands  as  they  can  pos- 
sibly be  got  to  go,  it  was  indeed  *'  virtue !  " 

Nevertheless,  what  atrocious  sufferings  are  those  even  of 
innocent  love  as  inflicted  by  the  stronger  upon  the  weaker 
sex — the  fathomless,  pitiless  torture  of  longing  and  despair 
endured  by  unmarried  girls  ''without  a  sign" — slow 
days,  weeks,  months,  years  of  hoping  and  waiting  for 
a  bliss  that  never  comes,  or  that  having  once  been,  never 
comes  again — truest  earthly  type  of  '*  the  worm  that  never 
dies,"  of  ''the  fire  that  is  not  quenched!  "  When  girls 
have  any  outside  scope  for  their  energies  and  ambitions 
they  can  forget  it  in  work  and  in  achievement ;  but  where 
they  live  cooped  up  at  home  as  they  so  often  do — sheltered 
and  "supported"  and  passively  waiting  like  fruit  on  the 
bough  for  a  passer-by  who  will  choose  and  so  offer  them  a 
destiny — oh,  is  there  any  future  state  of  being  wherein 
those  who  in  the  power  and  freedom  of  manhood  so 
wantonly  broad-cast  these  iron  pangs,  will  echo  them  in 
their  own  experience  enough  even  faintly  to  realize  what 
they  once  caused  their  fellow-creatures?  If  such  there  be, 
then  for  his  poor  little  Newport  "  Margie  "  alone,  Harvey 
Thayer  must  pay  a  sorrowful  retribution  ! 


CHAPTER  VII. 


HIS   '"  LITTLE   QUEEN." 


Mr.  Calvert  saw  his  mother-in-law  arrive  for  her  sec- 
ond New  York  visit  with  a  sinking  heart,  but  Julia  was 
overjoyed,  for  now  that  wedded  life  was  no  longer  a  deli- 
cious wonder,  and  the  glamour  of  the  great  city  was  get- 
ting to  be  an  old  story,  she  was  not  so  sure  that  in  some 
respects,  her  life  therein,  compared  with  that  which  her 
mother  had  so  hurried  her  out  of  in  Belmont,  was  not 
slightly  forlorn.  Mr.  Calvert  had  no  city  relations,  nor, 
excepting  Mrs.  Wilkins,  had  Julia.  Mrs.  Wilkins  was  a 
good  but  plain  and  dull  woman,  and  her  small  and  obscure 
visiting  list  contained  not  one  interesting  person.  Yet 
these,  with  their  boarding-house  acquaintance  and  Mr. 
Calvert's  few  friends,  were  all  the  people  Julia  knew  in 
this  huge  town. 

How  could  there  by  any  culture,  any  elegance,  any  dis- 
tinction, in  a  circle  of  which  retail  clerks — self-made, 
uneducated  young  men,  even  though  employed  in  such 
firms  as  Stewart's  or  Arnold's — formed  the  principal 
members  ? 

There  was  nothing  in  New  York  which  could  intellect- 
ually leaven  such  people.  Great  financiers  were  here, 
dumbly,  tirelessly  heaping  their  great  dumb  fortunes,  but 
no  great  citizens — urging,  inspiring,  uplifting  their  fellows. 
In  every  walk  of  life  were  leading  men,  but  no  leaders. 


54  ^£^^V   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

A  lambent  literary  galaxy — Irving,  Bryant,  Curtis,  Bay- 
ard Taylor — adorned  but  could  not  dispel  the  deep  literary 
twilight.  The  sun-ray  of  one  immortal  genius,  Edgar  Poe, 
had  sought  to  pierce  it,  only  to  be  sent  starving  into  his 
grave.  Owing  to  the  hostility  of  the  Catholic  Church,  there 
was  no  High  School  system  in  New  York  to  diffuse  intelli- 
gence among  the  masses  as  the  atmosphere  diffuses  the 
solar  Hght !  *  — no  popular  educator  like  the  Lowell  Insti- 
tute of  Boston,  with  its  admirable  lecture  courses  free 
every  night  in  the  week  for  six  months  of  the  year ;  no  free 
public  libraries  with  their  vast,  silent  influence  on  the  aver- 
age of  culture.  Amid  the  indifference  of  all  influential 
society  above  them,  what  was  Calvert's  little  sub-world 
hkely  to  learn  about  the  latest  books,  publications  and 
periodicals,  or  of  what  concerned  the  statesmen,  authors, 
artists  and  thinkers  of  the  world  except  as  these  were 
briefly  chronicled  by  the  daily  paper  which  men  skimmed 
every  morning  going  down  town  in  the  stage?  If  they 
read  a  light  magazine  it  was  the  most.  The  more  serious 
periodicals  were  never  dreamed  of,  and  novels  aside,  a 
real  book  was  quite  an  unknown  quantity. 

And  yet,  next  to  talking  about  people— for  she  dearly 
loved  to  gossip  and  speculate  about  her  acquaintance— to 
talk  and  to  hear  about  books  and  public  characters  and  pub- 
lic affairs  was  Julia's  pet  enjoyment.  In  Belmont,  owing 
to  her  intimacy  with  the  Ashurst  coterie,  she  occasionally 
met  superior  people— was,  in  fact,  brought  into  contact 
with  the  best  minds  of  her  own  rural  State.  Her  quick 
intelHgence  and  bright  repartee,  moreover,  had  made  her 
one  of  the  pet  Iambs  of  her  clergyman's  flock— and  this 
clergyman  was  nothing  less  than  an  exquisite,  scholarly 


*  N.   B.     Until  the  anti-Tammany  administration  of  Mayor   Strong* 
1894-97,  there  w^re  no  High  Schools  in  New  York  City. 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  55 

Bostonian  of  the  Bostonians,  a  Harvard  graduate,  who  )ent 
her  books  and  interested  himself  in  her  reading.  From 
both  his  and  Mr.  Ashurst's  inspiration  she  was  now  cut  off, 
and  no  others  took  their  places,  for  no  clergyman  ever 
came  near  her. 

In  those  days  the  infant  musical  and  artistic  interests  of 
New  York  were  not  in  everybody's  mouth  as  the  maturer 
ones  are  now,  and  were  to  be  found  only  by  those  who 
loved  them  enough  to  seek  them.  Knowing  nothing  of 
either,  it  never  occurred  to  Julia  to  try  and  number  these 
among  her  distractions.  In  the  morning  she  could  stroll 
down  Broadway  in  and  out  of  the  shops,  and  the  theatre 
was  always  a  possibility  in  the  evening;  but  neither  of  these 
amusements  counted  for  much  with  her,  and  as  she  could 
not  read  novels  all  the  time  and  detested  sewing,  she  really 
suffered  with  loneliness  in  the  long,  long  days  when  Frank 
was  closely  confined  to  his  business,  and  often  came  home 
too  tired  at  night  even  to  care  to  talk.  She  would  not 
have  gone  back  to  Belmont  for  the  world,  and  yet  the 
rushing  town  was  often  to  her  a  vacuum  and  a  void. 

It  was  no  wonder,  then,  that  the  indolent,  dependent, 
sociable  young  creature  welcomed  her  mother  with  enthu- 
siasm as  the  second  and  also  the  third  winter  of  her  mar- 
riage set  in,  and  parted  with  her  reluctantly  when  the 
spring  opened ;  but  with  Mr.  Calvert  the  reluctance  and 
the  enthusiasm  were  all  the  other  way.  The  trouble  was, 
he  found  that  his  fond  and  flattering  mother-in-law  never 
came  under  his  roof,  or  got  him  under  hers  without  con- 
triving also  to  get  herself  into  his  debt  on  the  basis  of 
"expecting  a  cheque  next  week,"  and  of  leaving  herself 
there  for  the  unanswerable  reason  that  **  Mr.  Dexter  could 
not  collect ;  '*  and  being  first  and  before  everything  a  busi- 


56  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ness  man,  he  determined  after  the  third  long  interminable 
visit,  that  if,  as  he  was  graduall)^  coming  to  believe,  he  had 
given  a  good  deal  more  in  his  marriage  than  he  received, 
Mrs.  Dexter,  at  any  rate,  should  get  very  little  further  out 
of  him. 

However  ardently  a  man  may  worship  his  wife  at  first, 
and  call  her  his  **  little  queen,"  the  time  sooner  or  later 
comes  when  he  wishes  the  situation  reversed  and  would 
fain  have  the  attention  of  their  immediate  circle  directed 
rather  to  his  sovereignty  than  to  hers.  The  process  gen- 
erally comes  about  insensibly,  as  the  bride  merges  into  the 
matron  and  forgets  herself  in  her  husband  and  children ; 
but  our  pretty  Julia,  literary  and  indolent,  fond  of  admi- 
ration and  flattery,  loving  to  be  petted  and  waited  on,  and 
with  inflated  ideas  of  her  own  superiority,  was  not  one  of 
the  self-forgetting  kind — ^at  least,  not  vis-a-vis  with  a  man 
whom  she  had  declared  from  the  first  was  not  her  "  ideal  " 
^nd  in  marrying  whom  she  had  always  felt  she  had  com- 
mitted a  condescension.  Quite  the  centre  of  her  own 
little  universe,  she  took  for  granted  that  she  was  the  centre 
of  Frank  Calvert's  also,  and  enthroned  in  her  beauty  and 
talents  she  expected  to  be  worked  for  and  provided  for  by 
him  as  a  matter  of  course. 

In  short,  like  a  multitude  of  other  American  wives, 
Julia's  views  of  conjugal  reciprocity  were  simply,  though 
quite  unconsciously,  those  of  the  kept  mistress  toward 
her  **  protector."  And  her  husband  was  so  generous  and 
so  fond,  and  his  large  earnings  made  it  so  easy  for  him  to 
keep  her  in  liberal  comfort,  that  he  would  only  have 
enjoyed  carrying  the  pretty  burden  that  depended  so  abso- 
lutely upon  him,  had  she  had  any  adequate  sense  of 
their   real   relative  values — of  his   as   the   energetic   and 


A^EW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  57 

successful  bread-winner,  of  hers  as  the  languid  and  nerve- 
less spender.  But  while  it  was  to  his  talent  and  effort  and 
and  fidelity  that  they  owed  all  their  prosperity,  because  it 
was  commercial  and  not  professional  talent,  it  never 
seemed  to  Julia  that,  in  the  same  sense,  it  was  talent,  and 
that  it  would  have  asserted  itself  equally  in  more  intellect- 
ual and  conspicuous  forms  had  the  training  and  the  oppor- 
tunity been  open  to  it. 

Thus  underrating  her  husband,  so  little  did  it  occur  to 
her  self-love  that  he  should  at  least  appear  to  the  world  to 
be  the  head  of  the  married  pair,  that  she  delighted  to  show 
her  power,  as  if  never  quite  sure  that  she  possessed  it 
unless  she  were  exhibiting  it.  From  the  beginning  she 
took  the  lead  in  conversation  when  in  company,  and  in- 
private,  when  Mr.  Calvert  differed  from  her  about  little 
things,  she  would  not  refrain  from  ready  sarcasms  or  sharp 
repartee  even  before  a  third  person.  She  was  such  a  very, 
very  pretty  woman — Calvert's  fastidious  eye  was  so  con- 
tinually gratified  by  the  "  points"  that  kept  gleaming  out 
at  him  like  the  irridescence  on  a  pigeon's  throat — her 
slender  shape,  her  perfect  head,  her  exquisite  hand  and 
foot,  the  clear  white  and  red  of  her  cheek,  her  lovely 
dimples  and  smile — that  he  was  generally  patient  and 
good-natured  with  her  and  either  received  her  little  snubs 
laughingly  or  paid  her  off  in  teasing — for  she  was  so  proud 
that  she  was  easily  teased.  But  sometimes  he  would  take 
refuge  in  bad  temper  and  put  her  down  with  something 
savage,  and  then,  no  matter  what  the  provocation  might 
have  been,  she  was  too  haughty  ever  to  utter  the  first 
reconciling  word.  It  was  always  he  who  had  to  humble 
himself  and  come  round  with  pretty  coaxing  names  and 
fond  caresses — and  yet   this  young  wife  was  a   professed 


58  NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

follower  of  that  meek  and  lowly  Jesus,  who  when  He  opened 
His  mouth  to  teach  this  dark,  ut^happy  world  how  to  climb 
toward  the  light,  said  as  His  very  first  word — "  Blessed 
are  the  poor  (i.  e.,  the  humble,  the  teachable)  in  spirit!  " 

As  for  real  wifely  tenderness,  though  during  the  first 
years  of  their  married  life  Calvert  was  all  tenderness  to 
her,  and  though  Julia  was  so  warm  and  sweet  to  all  her 
friends — rarely  did  he  gain  more  than  a  pleased  and  soft- 
ened look  or  a  little  pat  on  the  cheek  in  return  for  his 
devotion.  It  never  occurred  to  her  that  simply  wifely 
policy  and  prudence  demanded  that  she  should  feign  if  she 
could  not  feel.  A  sympathetic  glance,  a  phrase  of  fond 
solicitude,  a  foolish  petting  never  escaped  her,  and  she 
honestly  thought  she  did  her  whole  duty  in  merely  suffer- 
ing herself  to  be  loved. 

It  was  hardly  her  fault.  The  relation  between  her  own 
parents  was  absolutely  frigid.  She  had  never  been  taught 
that  to  love  and  think  and  care  for  another  was  a  wife's 
special  mission.  She  had  married  with  only  a  vague  con- 
ception of  what  marriage  is,  and  without  being  really  in 
love  with  her  husband,  or  ever  having  been  so  with  anyone 
else.  It  is  not  always  desirable  to  be  the  first  occupant  of 
a  woman's  heart.  Had  Julia  been  disappointed  before  she 
met  Mr.  Calvert  he  would  have  been  much  better  appre- 
ciated, since  there  is  nothing  like  loving  in  vain  one's  self 
to  teach  one  how  to  be  grateful  for  love  from  another. 

As  it  was,  her  first  inward  recoil  from  the  realities  of 
marriage  had  never  been  made  good  to  her,  as  it  often  is 
in  similar  cases,  by  the  awakening  and-  growth  of  the 
passion  which  alone  justifies  marriage.  She  always  felt 
that  she  had  made  the  sacrifice,  and  that  the  pound  of 
flesh  in    return  for  it  was   nothing  more  than   her    due. 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  59 

That  it  would  always  be  paid  she  took  as  a  matter  of 
course.  Ignorant  of  human  nature  and  confident  in  her 
own  unusual  charm,  it  never  entered  into  her  wildest 
speculations  that  Mr.  Calvert  could  ever  get  tired  of  this 
de  haut  en  bas  and  be  tempted  to  break  his  chains.  So 
she  kept  on  digging  the  pit  into  which  even  such  happiness 
as  she  had  was  one  day  to  plunge  and  be  buried  forever. 


i 


CHAPTER    VIII. 


A   NEW    HOUSEHOLD. 


After  three  or  four  years,  boarding,  as  it  always  does, 
grew  very  tiresome  to  the  young  couple,  and  as  Calvert  had 
now  risen  to  be  the  head  of  the  wholesale  branch  of  his 
department  in  the  extensive  house  that  employed  him,  his 
increased  earnings  permitted  him  to  think  of  making  a 
little  home  of  his  own.  Julia,  too,  was  now  expecting  her 
first  confinement,  and  that  made  housekeeping  almost  im- 
perative. As  we  have  seen,  Mrs.  Dexter  had  special  rea- 
sons for  not  appearing  in  New  York  this  winter  until  after 
the  holidays,  and  Mr.  Calvert  devoutly  hoped  that  they 
should  escape  her  for  the  whole  season.  No  sooner,  how- 
ever, did  she  hear  the  news  from  Julia  in  February,  than 
she  came  fluttering  down  on  all  the  wings  of  solicitude  and 
excitement  to  help  her  darling  make  up  her  house  linen 
and  layette,  and  to  enjoy  the  bliss  of  all  the  consulting  and 
shopping  and  bargaining  that  the  setting  up  of  a  new 
household  involves. 

A  frown  had  gathered  on  Mr.  Calvert's  handsome  face 
when  he  heard  that  his  mother-in-law  was  expected. 

"  I  really  see  no  need  whatever  of  your  mother's  coming 
to  see  us  at  this  time,  Julia.  I  wish  you  would  write  to 
her  and  say  that  it  is  not  at  all  convenient.  Mrs.  Ford 
has  no  vacant  room,  and  she  will  have  to  take  our  little 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  6i 

side  room,  as  she  did  last  time,  and  that  crowds  us  dread- 
fully." 

"  Thank  you,  Frank  !  If  you  wish  to  send  such  an  un- 
gracious message  to  my  mother,  you  may  do  it  yourself.  If 
you  had  any  feeling  I  should  think  you  would  wish  her  to 
be  with  me  for  the  next  few  months. ' ' 

"During  your  confinement,  of  course;  but  up  to  that 
time  we  shall  have  expenses  enough,  I'm  thinking,  without 
your  mother's  board  and  etceteras  to  pay,  too." 

**  Whose  fault  is  it  that  there  are  extra  expenses?  I'm 
sure  /don't  want  to  have  children,  and  never  did  !  It  is 
hard  that  I  should  have  to  bear  all  the  wretchedness  and 
misery  of  it  and  not  have  the  only  person  with  me  who 
could  give  me  any  comfort  and  sympathy." 

Calvert  said  nothing  more,  but  he  took  within  himself  a 
resolution  deep  and  dire.  Julia's  unfeigned  terror  and 
aversion  at  the  situation  in  which  she  found  herself,  had 
disgusted  him  and  gone  far  to  give  him  a  thorough  con- 
tempt for  women  in  general.  Though  not  given  to  books, 
he  had  picked  up  a  strong  impression  that  women  who 
loved  their  husbands  were  not  apt  to  be  unwilling  to  bear 
them  children.  '^I  don't  believe  she  cares  a  rap  for  me," 
said  he  to  himself,  "but,  by  Jove,  I'm  not  going  to  take 
care  of  her  and  her  old  mother  too,  as  before  another 
half-year  she'll  find  out." 

Mrs.  Dexter' s  intensity  of  interest  in  hunting  the  roof 
that  was  to  shelter  the  Calvert  menage  can  be  imagined, 
but  alas !  after  exhausting  New  York  advertisements  and 
house  agents,  Frank  Calvert  declared  decidedly  that  he 
could  not  afford  New  York  rents,  and  that  they  must  go 
over  to  Brooklyn.  This  was  a  severe  set-back  to  Mrs. 
Dexter' s  pride,  and  she  sighed  to  herself  that  if  Julia  had 


62  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

her  management  they  could  live  in  New  York  on  Calvert's 
estimate  and  save  money  on  it  She  even  suggested  as 
much  to  the  young  lady,  but  was  silenced  with : 

*'Oh,  nonsense,  mother!  You  don't  suppose  /can 
count  the  drops  of  milk,  as  you  do,  do  you?" — and  ac- 
cordingly a  little  house  in  Brooklyn  in  a  cheerful  shady 
street,  was  taken  for  two  years. 

Mr.  Calvert  did  not  leave  the  house-furnishing  to  Julia 
and  Mrs.  Dexter  by  any  means.  His  practical  and  busy 
temperament  took  the  greatest  delight  in  going  with  them 
to  the  upholstery  and  furniture  shops,  and  in  giving,  des- 
potic man-fashion,  the  final  decision  about  everything. 
The  result  of  their  combined  efforts  was  a  comfortable  little 
box  enough,  and  in  his  pride  and  joy  at  having  an  estab- 
lishment of  his  own,  its  master  thought  it  almost  perfect. 
In  reality  it  was  just  like  thousands  of  other  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  homes,  and  expressed  the  upholsterer  far  more 
than  it  did  any  individuality  or  talent  of  the  occupants. 
The  regulation  carpets,  curtains  and  furniture,  a  few  show 
books  on  the  table  and  on  the  bottom  shelves  of  an  etagere, 
a  stag  or  a  dog  of  Landseer  on  the  wall,  a  bronze  clock 
and  figures  on  the  mantel  and  a  parian  ^*  Clytie  "  on  some- 
thing else — cannot  the  reader  see  it  all  from  the  memory 
of  endless  repetitions  among  his  acquaintance? 

Newspaper  correspondents  in  Paris  have  observed  apropos 
of  the  sales  of  the  effects  of  noted  demi-mondaines,  that 
women  who  had  given  the  laws  in  dress  to  two  hemispheres, 
had  no  taste  or  discrimination  whatever  in  the  furnishing 
and  arrangement  of  their  costly  establishments. 

But  how  should  such  women  know  what  the  houses  of 
women  of  birth  and  culture  are  like?  They  are  not  brought 
up  in  such  themselves,  and  have  no  possible  means  of  ac- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  63 

cess  to  them.  Naturally  then,  they  cannot  imitate  them ; 
whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  they  do  see  ladies  driving  and 
walking  every  day,  and  so  of  course  they  can  catch  and 
copy  their  toilet  effects  and  even  re-combine,  and  with  the 
aid  of  the  boundless  money  at  their  command,  go  beyond 
them. 

And  similarly  with  the  Calverts.  Frank  Calvert  always 
superintended  the  purchase  of  Julia's  clothes  with  the  most 
anxious  care,  and  the  result  was  a  toilet  as  severely  elegant 
and  exquisite  as  though  she  were  a  descendant  of  all  the 
Knickerbockers.  He  every  day  saw  the  highest  fashion  in 
America  thronging  the  counter  at  which  he  and  his  brother 
clerks  presided,  and  it  was  easy  for  his  practised  eye  to 
reproduce  it  all  in  his  wife's  dress.  But  a  home  of  high 
and  inherited  culture  he  could  not  see  nor  even  imagine, 
and  so  he  could  not  imitate  it;  neither,  to  be  candid, 
could  many  other  New  Yorkers  outside  of  the  narrow  cir- 
cle of  the  pre-revolutionary  aristocrats.  These  families 
had  libraries,  pictures  and  such  rare  and  beautiful  things  as 
befit  opulent  and  cultivated  society.  But  they  were  such 
a  little  eddy  by  themselves  that  on  the  torrent  of  wealth 
which  had  come  pouring  into  New  York  their  standards 
made  little  or  no  impression.  In  fact,  until  the  wave  of 
English  Decorative  Art  struck  (literally)  the  city  of  New 
York  through  the  Philadelphia  Exposition,  nothing  in  our 
grand  American  centre  was  more  noticeable  than  the 
almost  absurd  contrast  between  its  charmingly,  often  poeti- 
cally dressed  women,  and  the  blank,  astonishing  sameness 
and  vacuity  of  its  interiors.  As  was  once  said  of  some- 
thing else,  "  They  were  all  alike  as  so  many  negro  voters, 
and  for  the  same  reason — a  deficiency  of  brains." 

And  yet,  Edgar  Poe,  that  master  artist  and  embodiment 


64  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

of  sensitive  and  unerring  taste,  had  in  his  ''  Philosophy  of 
Furniture ' '  pointed  out  the^  loudness,  ignorance  and 
garishness  of  the  average  New  York  drawing  room,  and 
had  laid  down  most  of  the  now  accepted  principles  of 
Household  Art  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 
the  Philadelphia  Exposition,  and  many  years  before 
even  Morris  and  Eastlake  in  London  had  begun  re- 
claiming modern  house  decoration  from  the  vulgar  errors 
of  its  way ! 


CHAPTER   IX. 

"SOMETHING    TOO    MUCH    OF    THIS." 

It  was  immediately  after  Julia's  recovery  from  ner  con- 
finement that  Mr.  Calvert  had  his  long  meditated  break 
with  Mrs.  Dexter.  She  knew  well  that  she  had  outstayed 
her  welcome,  and  that  she  was  of  no  earthly  use  in  the 
now  thoroughly  organized  household.  Yet  such  was  her 
loathing  of  the  country  and  her  passion  for  the  city  that 
week  followed  week  and  still  she  lingered  on.  Finally  one 
morning  Mr.  Calvert  said  to  her:  **Mrs.  Dexter,  my  ex- 
penses are  now  much  larger  than  they  were  before,  and 
how  about  that  thousand  dollars  or  over  that  you  owe  me  ? 
I  shall  really  need  about  two  hundred  of  it  next  week." 

Mrs.  Dexter  turned  pale,  and  cleared  her  throat  a  little 
before  answering.  '  *  A  thousand  dollars  !  Is  it  as  much 
as  that,  Frank?  Are  you  sure?  I  had  an  idea  that  it 
was  not  more  than  five  hundred." 

''  Much  nearer  twelve  hundred  than  a  thousand,  as  true 
as  you're  sitting  there,  though  I'll  call  it  a  thousand.  I 
have  it  all  down  in  black  and  white,  dates  and  occasions 
and  everything." 

So  had  Mrs.  Dexter.  She  was  not  a  reckless  borrower 
or  debtor.  She  always  knew  exactly  the  sum  total  that 
she  was  owing,  and  her  cold  blue  eyes  seemed  always  hunt- 
ing among  their  crow's  feet  for  ways  and  means  to  pay  it. 
Tim's  legacy,  the  whole  of  it,  had  long  ago  been  trans 


66  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

muted  into  the  various  triumphs  of  the  Dexter  New  York 
and  Belmont  career.  v 

*'  I  was  thinking  only  last  week,  Frank,  dear,  that  what 
with  Julia's  illness  and  all  you  would  be  needing  some  of 
the  money,  and  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Dexter  to  send  me  at  least 
a  hundred  dollars  immediately ;  and  he  wrote  back  that  I 
should  have  the  next  hundred  and  fifty  that  came  to  him 
from  the  Benson  lawsuit — you  remember  about  that  law- 
suit, don't  you?  All  the  lawyers  are  in  it,  and  the  fees 
are  tremendous — for  Belmont,  I  mean.  Of  course  they'd 
be  nothing  in  New  York.  What  I  always  tell  Mr.  Dexter 
— if  he  only  wouldn' t  \\'2&X.t  himself  and  keep  us  all  poor 
by  sticking  in  the  mud  up  in  Belmont !  ' ' 

•'  When  does  Mr.  Dexter  expect  this  money  ?  " 

''He  said  it  might  be  any  time;  he  is  pressing  for  it 
now. ' ' 

' '  Now  come,  Mrs.  Dexter,  own  up  !  Does  my  father- 
in-law  know  at  all — has  he  the  least  idea — that  you  have 
from  time  to  time  borrowed  all  this  money  from  me  ?  " 

Mrs.  Dexter  had  never  told  him ;  that  was  certain. 
Whether  he  suspected  it  or  not  was  another  matter.  But 
she  exclaimed  virtuously — 

''  Why,  of  course  he  knows  it,  and  whenever  I  have 
spoken  to  him  about  paying  up,  he  always  said,  '  Frank 
knows  the  money  is  perfectly  safe  with  me,  and  whenever 
he  wants  it  I  suppose  he  will  call  for  it.'  ' 

"  Excuse  me,  madam,  but,"  with  crushing  emphasis, 
*'  I  don' t  believe  it  !  My  father-in-law  is  an  honest  man, 
and  he  would  never  have  thought  of  such  a  thing  as  let- 
ting you  run  in  debt  to  me  to  such  an  extent  when  it  is  as 
much  as  he  can  do  to  make  both  ends  meet.  Now,  Mrs. 
Dexter,  I'll  tell  you  what.     I've  seen  through  your  little 


NEW  YORK;   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  67 

game  very  nearly  from  the  beginning,  but  for  Julia's  sake 
I  made  up  my  mind  to  bear  it  as  long  as  I  could  stand  it. 
But  I  said  to  myself,  my  limit  is  a  thousand  dollars. 
Whenever  she  reaches  that  she  sponges  no  more  on  Frank 
Calvert.  You  have  passed  that  limit  by  more  than  a  hun- 
dred dollars.  I  shall  buy  your  ticket  for  Belmont  to-day, 
and  I  expect  you  to  leave  this  house  to-morrow  and  never 
come  into  it  again  for  more  than  one  month  at  a  time, 
once  a  year.     The  thousand  I  will  wipe  off  my  books. ' ' 

"Thank  you!  You  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind. 
Every  cent  of  that  debt  shall  be  paid  up,  principal  and  in- 
terest. I  never  was  so  insulted  in  my  life  I  To  think  of 
my  being  treated  so  by  Julia' s  husband — that  precious 
child  for  whom  I  did  everything  but  breathe  until  she  mar- 
ried a  brute  !  ' '  and  Mrs.  Dexter  burst  into  angry  tears. 

''  *  Brute  '  indeed  !  If  I'  had  had  any  idea  what  a  pre- 
cious mother  in-law  I  was  in  for,  your  *  precious  Julia' 
should  have  had  no  chance  to  accept  the  '  brute '  (to  say 
nothing  of  her  being  such  a  damned,  cold,  exacting  thing 
herself),"  added  he,  sotto  voce,  as  he  strode  out  of  the 
house. 

Mrs.  Dexter  went  up  stairs  to  pack.  She  related  her 
wrongs  to  Julia,  and  the  latter  scarcely  looked  at  or  spoke 
to  her  husband  for  a  week  after  her  mother's  departure. 
But  Calvert  had  taken  the  bit  between  his  teeth,  and  to  a 
certain  extent  was  now  determined  to  be  master. 

"■  See  here,  Julia,"  said  he,  after  some  days  of  domestic 
thunder-cloud,  "  I  don't  propose  to  be  pouted  at  in  my  own 
house  any  longer.  Your  mother  is  in  the  wrong,  and  you 
know  she  is.  But  if  you  prefer  her  wrong  to  my  right  you 
can  have  her.  I  will  give  you  half — no,  two-thirds,  since 
you  have  the  child — of  my  income,  which,  however,  I  shall 


68  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

not  increase  in  case  it  grows  any  larger.  You  can  live 
with  whom  and  how  you  like,  and  I  will  make  myself  con- 
tented, bachelor-fashion,  once  Aiore  in  New  York.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  you  are  going  to  live  with  me,  whether 
I  am  your  *  ideal '  (with  a  slight  sneer)  or  not,  you  must 
be  civil.  I  know  I've  done  a  harsh,  a  very  harsh  thing, 
but,  by  George  !  when  you.  want  to  hold  a — a — (he  wanted 
to  say  *  snake  ')  an  eel,  you've  got  to  put  your  heel  down." 

He  waited  for  an  answer,  but  Julia  still  sat  sullen. 

"  Come  !  will  you  be  friends  and  let  me  enjoy  our  little 
home  and  baby  now  we've  got  'em  ?  You  wouldn't  want 
to  break  this  all  up,  would  you  ?  And  yet  to  have  your 
mother  with  us  six  or  seven  months  of  every  year  would 
poison  my  life — drive  me  crazy  !  Come,  dear !  admit 
that  I've  done  the  generous  thing  by  Mrs.  Dexter  all  this 
time,  and  that  I  really  can  do  no  more ;  more  than  two 
hundred  and  fifty  a  year  !  Think  of  it,  and  I  only  a 
clerk!" 

He  was  kneeling  by  her  side  with  his  arm  round  her, 
and  to  tell  the  truth,  Julia  had  herself  been  amazed  at  the 
amount. 

"  You  need  not  have  sent  her  away  in  such  a  brutal  and 
ungentlemanly  fashion." 

**  Hang  it !  you  know  I  have  to  get  mad  before  I  can 
say  anything  disagreeable  to  anybody." 

For  once  Julia  repressed  an  impulse  to  stick  a  pin  into 
him  by  retorting  that  **she  didn't  know  anything  of  the 
kind,"  and  so  they  patched  it  up.  She  was  thoroughly 
surprised  and  startled  at  Calvert's  proposal  of  a  separation. 
In  her,  loyalty  and  constancy  were  something  intense — 
the  very  strongest  fibres  of  her  nature ;  and  though  she 
did  not  romantically  love  her  husband,  yet  she  felt  so  en- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  69 

tirely  that  she  belonged  to  him,  was  bone  of  his  bone  and 
flesh  of  his  flesh,  that  the  possibility  of  parting  with  him 
would  have  been  to  her  inconceivable.  Yet  here  he  was 
suggesting  it  almost  off-hand !  For  the  first  time  the 
''little  queen"  had  a  suspicion  that,  like  other  thrones, 
her  own  was  not  incpDaNe  of  ♦^cttering.  The  petals  of 
life's  flower  had  begun  to  fall. 


CHAPTER  X. 


STILL    ''  EXCELSIOR. 


Notwithstanding  her  ignominious  banishment,  Mrs. 
Dexter  returned  to  Behnont  with  a  lighter  heart  than  she 
had  known  for  some  time.  '  *  The  thousand  I  will  take  off 
my  books;'' — that  surprising  and  delicious  announcement 
fairly  sang  in  her  ears — was  more  than  balm  enough  for 
her  wounded  pride.  In  another  year  Fanny  would  be 
married,  and  that  would  give  her  a  second  and  far  firmer 
foothold  in  the  city  of  her  devotion  than  the  first — the 
generous,  chivalrous,  unsuspicious  David  Howe  being  a 
very  different  person  from  that  ''mean,  rude,  cross,  selfish, 
overbearing  Calvert !''  as  she  now  in  her  thoughts  con- 
temptuously characterized  the  latter.  As  for  next  winter, 
she  would  not  care  to  be  longer  in  New  York  ''  any  way  " 
than  just  to  do  the  shopping  with  Fanny  for  Fanny's 
trousseau,  for  it  would  take  them  the  whole  ensuing  season 
to  make  it  up  in  time  for  the  June  wedding. 

Such  was  the  cheerful  burden  of  her  reflections,  and 
when  her  Belmont  friends  came  to  call,  she  could  not  say 
enough  of  ''Frank  Calvert's"  generous  ideas  in  house- 
keeping, and  she  sketched  for  them  what  had  been  to  her 
the  mortifying  collapse  of  the  young  people  into  Brooklyn 
for  their  first  housekeeping,  in  the  brightest  tints  of  her 
magic  palate  : 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  71 

^\  Such  a  lovely  bejew  of  a  house  in  Brooklyn  !  Julia  is 
enjoying  the  change  so  much  !  New  York  is  so  noisy — so 
dusty  !  She  had  got  tired  of  it.  Brooklyn  is  more  like 
the  country — more  trees  and  a  great  deal  quieter.  You 
know  Julia  never  can  forget  Belmont.  Mr.  Calvert  pre- 
ferred New  York — more  can ven lent  to  his  business  and 
everything;  but  he  said,  '■  Oh,  well,  if  Julia  likes  it,  we'll 
say  Brooklyn,  though  I  know  she  won't  stay  there- —one- 
horse  place  !  '  He  saw  that  she  was  nervous  at  that  par- 
ticular time,  poor  child,  and  he  consulted  her  every  wish 
-a-h." 

''How  does  Mrs.  Calvert  enjoy  housekeeping?"  the 
housewifely  Belmont  mind  would  of  course  inquire. 

''  Delighted!  You'd  think  she'd  been  at  it  all  her  life. 
I  fairly  opened  my  eyes  at  the  child.  Don't  seem  to  be 
the  least  trouble  to  her,  and  certainly  she  has  everything 
to  do  with.  The  house  is  curtained  and  carpeted  all  over, 
and  as  for  the  furniture — really  !  she  had  to  beg  Mr.  Cal- 
vert not  to  be  extravagant.  Men  always  are,  you  know. 
-£'/-egant  rosewood  in  the  drawing-room,  and  black  walnut 
with  marble  tops  in  all  the  rooms  ;  the  most  be-tzz^-tiful 
damask — linen  sheets  and  pillow  slips,  and  oh — love-\y 
silver  and  glass  ?  I  just  wish  you  could  drop  in  at  their 
table.  Mr.  Calvert  is  such  a  provider  !  He  does  all  the 
marketing  himself  on  his  way  to  business.  He  said  the 
very  first  day  that  he  had  had  enough  of  boarding-house 
fare,  and  now  he  was  going  to  have  something  good  to  eat 
-a-h." 

Her  mother's  eulogy  of  Julia's  housekeeping,  by  the 
way,  was  more  true  than  from  her  indolence  might  before- 
hand have  been  supposed — the  secret  of  it  being  that  she 
not  only  had  naturally  fastidious  tastes,  but  also  held  in 


72  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

memory  the  high  Belmont  standards  of  neatness  and  home 
cookery,  and  she  calmly  insisted  on  her  servants  coming 
up  to  them.  She  never  praised  her  maids.  She  never 
made  allowance  for  them.  She  used  them  precisely  like 
machines,  and  never  spared  them  an  unnecessary  step. 
Consequently,  on  Solomon's  principle  of:  **If  thy  slave 
complain,  lay  on  more  work,"  she  was  well  served.  But 
it  was  singular  how  naturally  it  came  to  her,  this  helpless 
fine-ladyism  and  imperiousness  combined,  when  in  her  na- 
tive village  all  the  women  but  one  or  two  spent  their  morn- 
ings in  calico  and  an  apron,  ekeing  out  the  rude  strength 
of  their  rough  Irish  maids-of-all  work,  by  making  beds  and 
washing  dishes,  sweeping,  dusting,  and  putting  to  rights, 
and  doing  all  the  delicate  cooking  themselves  besides.  It 
was  the  unadulterated,  original  ''bog-trotter"  the  Amer- 
ican housekeeper  had  then  to  contend  with — not  the  much 
more  refined,  but  even  more  exasperating  young  woman 
as  she  has  long  been  evolved  by  the  Irish  National  School 
system  inaugurated  over  eighty  years  ago. 

Our  Julia  never  lifted  a  finger.  She  merely  spake  and 
it  was  done — her  little  princess  hands  remaining  in  her  lap 
as  white  and  soft  as  though  there  were  no  such  things  as 
dish-cloths  and  dusters  in  the  world.  As  for  the  baby,  it 
was  a  pretty  and  jolly  and  brown-eyed  girl-dumpling, 
so  vigorous  and  healthy  that  it  gave  its  mother  little 
trouble.  But  somehow  it  looked  too  like  its  father  to 
awaken  a  thoroughly  responsive  chord  in  her  breast.  So 
maternity,  like  wifehood,  remained  still  sleeping  Within 
her,  and  though  now  to  some  extent  outwardly  busied  with 
womanly  cares,  Julia  really  remained  as  self-absorbed  as 
ever. 

In  the  summer  she  went  up  to  Belmont  as  usual,  espe- 


NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  73 

cially  as  the  little  Clara  was  to  be  baptized,  and  Julia  would 
not  willingly  have  let  any  one  do  it  but  Mr.  Gardner; 
though,  like  most  mothers,  the  thought  of  what  baptism 
really  is,  never  entered  her  mind.  Christians  constantly 
ask  each  other,  ''Is  he  or  she  a  member  of  the  church?  '•' 
when  they  mean,  ''Is  he  or  she  a  communicant?^^ — quite 
ignoring  that  it  is  baptism  which  makes  the  "  member  "  of 
Christ's  "church,"  and  which  entails  all  the  Christian's 
responsibilities. 

The  "dream  too  bright  to  last"  of  Harvey  Thayer 
having  totally  faded  away,  Mrs.  Dexter  decided  to  an- 
nounce, which  in  Belmont  was  not  to  contradict,  the  en- 
gagement which  the  deluded  Howe  had  looked  upon  as 
practically  settled  for  years. 

In  fact,  the  Dexter  coruscations  of  this  season  were  the 
most  vivid  and  impressive  that  Belmont  had  as  yet  wit- 
nessed. The  exquisitely  fresh  young  mother,  Mrs.  Cal- 
vert, the  bright  and  delicately  blooming  Fanny,  Isabel 
Eaton,  beauty's  softest  queen — the  three  headed  by  Mrs. 
Dexter' s  own  conscious  "style,"  on  Sundays  filled  the 
Dexter  pew  at  the  top  of  the  little  church  with  a  bewilder- 
ment of  fashion  and  fascination. 

Those  were  the  lawless  days  when,  if  she  wished,  a 
woman  could  clothe  herself  in  all  the  hues  of  the  rainbow 
at  once,  and  with  each  one  fighting  all  the  others.  This 
Mrs.  Calvert  and  Miss  Eaton  never  did.  As  is  generally 
the  case  with  the  prettiest  women,  their  dress  was  but  the 
harmonious  frame  or  setting  to  their  charms.  But  Fanny 
had  a  passion  for  strong  and  glaring  color,  and  even  her 
clear  pink  cheeks  could  hardly  reconcile  the  war  between 
the  blue  crape  bonnet  and  green  silk  mantilla  with  which 
she  dazzled  Mr.  Gardner's  sober  flock  that  summer.     The 


74  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Dexters  always  came  late  to  church,  and  as  their  silken 
skirts  slowly  rustled  up  the  aisle^the  breath  of  perfume 
that  lingered  behind  them  seemed  to  the  bright-eyed  rising 
generation  which  watched  their  gorgeousness  like  an  ema- 
nation from  another  world. 

Nor  were  these  gay  flowers  barren  of  fruit  for  the  garden 
of  the  Lord.  They  always  put  in  a  quarter  each  into  the 
monthly  collection,  so  that,  as  Mrs.  Dexter  pointed  out  to 
Mr.  Gardner  with  pious  satisfaction — ''Never  less  than  a 
dollar  goes  into  the  plate  from  our  pew  every  Communion 
Sunday-a-h !  ' ' 

It  was  the  only  Dexter  contribution  to  the  support  of  re- 
ligion— Mr.  Gardner's  salary,  by  the  way,  being  six  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year,  which  was  never  entirely  paid,  while 
his  wife  played  the  organ,  his  son  blew  the  bellows,  his 
daughters  sang  in  the  choir,  all  for  nothing,  and  they  took 
pupils  into  their  family  to  eke  out  with,  besides. 

How  easy  it  is  to  sneer  at  the  Christian  clergy — at  those 
patient,  unobtrusive  men,  who  alone  of  their  fellow  crea- 
tures try  with  their  slender  force  to  hold  this  great  way- 
ward world  still  moored  to  Heaven ;  and  how  few  of  the 
strong  ones  of  the  earth  condescend  to  help  them  in  a  ti- 
tanic, eternal  task  compared  with  which  all  their  own  ends 
are  light  and  vain  as  were  poor  Mrs.  Dexter' s  aims  and 
strivings  after  oneness  with  the  money  and  fashion  of  New 
York  !  I  think  if  the  confident  and  intellectual  but  earth- 
satisfied  Mr.  Ashurst  shall  be  shown  by  some  angel  in  the 
next  world  one  after  another  of  Mr.  Gardner's  exquisitely 
spiritual  sermons  with — ''Mr.  Ashurst  present,''  or,  Mr. 
Ashurst  not  present ' '  invariably  noted  upon  each,  his 
heart  will  smite  him  to  discover  how  his  mere  presence  up- 
held that  meek  ambassador  of  God,  and  how  his  many  un- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  75 

necessary  absences  probably  depressed  and  weighed  him 
down. 

The  brilliancy  of  this  Dexter  season  culminated  when 
the  happy  lover  came  up  to  Belmont  and  made  a  summer 
visit  of  several  weeks,  taking  the  whole  family  and  their 
favorite  neighbors  on  jolly  picnics  and  excursions,  and 
paying  the  piper  after  Mrs.  Dexter' s  own  heart.  When  he 
returned  to  the  city  he  sent  his  betrothed  a  watch  in  blue 
enamel  and  diamonds  worthy  of  a  countess,  and  at  the  vil- 
lage teas  she  wore  it  in  full  sight,  much  to  the  disgust  of 
one  Belmont  matron  whose  city  relatives  were  of  the  most 
undoubted  social  prestige,  and  who  remarked  sarcastically 
to  a  friend  that  she  had  "■  never  heard  of  a  watch  being 
displayed  as  an  ornament T'  The  wedding  was  definitely 
fixed  for  the  following  June,  and  all  through  the  interven- 
ing period  Mr.  Howe's  star  was  triumphantly  in  the  as- 
cendant in  Mrs.  Dexter's  horizon.  His  generosity,  his 
cleverness,  his  devotion  to  his  family,  the  immense  esteem 
and  confidence  felt  in  him  by  the  firm  which  had  just 
taken  him  into  partnership,  his  strict  moral  principle,  his 
remarkable  wit  (Mr.  Howe  was  an  inveterate  punster) — 
upon  all  these  virtues  and  perfections  Mrs.  Dexter  was 
never  weary  of  descanting. 

It  all  had  rather  a  flavor  of  Dead  Sea  fruit  to  Fanny,  it 
must  be  confessed,  whose  thoughts  were  continually  con- 
trasting the  real  joy  of  the  previous  summer  with  the  hol- 
low smiles  of  this.  The  lovely  Eaton,  too,  left  Belmont 
in  drooping  spirits.  Her  heart  would  fain  have  found  its 
home  with  her  country  adorer,  who  was  really  an  excep- 
tionally gifted  fellow,  and  whose  after  career  proved  it. 
But  alas,  beauties  must  have  money,  and  so,  though  she 
wept,   she    refused    him.      Mr.    Calvert    did    not    appear 


76  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

in  Belmont  this  season.  In  fact,  excepting  for  a  day 
or  two  at  Fanny's  wedding^,  he  was  not  seen  there 
again  for  years,  and  people  after  a  time  guessed  quite 
correctly  that  the  relations  between  himself  and  his  de- 
voted mother-in-law  had  become,  in  diplomatic  parlance, 
•'somewhat  strained!'* 


CHAPTER   XI. 


CHEATED  HYMEN. 


Everything  being  progressive  in  this  country,  all  the 
arrangements  and  appointments  of  her  second  daughter's 
wedding  were  projected  by  Mrs.  Dexter  much  nearer  the 
New  York  plane  than  those  of  her  first  had  been.  There 
were  more  silk  dresses  in  Miss  Fanny's  trousseau,  and  her 
under-linen  was  much  more  elaborate.  More  guests  were 
to  be  invited  from  a  distance  and  fewer  from  the  village. 
The  bride  was  to  be  in  white  satin,  and  there  were  to  be 
four  bridesmaids,  Miss  Eaton,  of  course,  being  the  first ; 
and  lastly,  the  ceremony  was  to  be  performed  at  the  house 
instead  of  at  the  church,  Mrs.  Dexter  having  a  confused 
notion  that  this  was  more  aristocratic  and  exclusive,  and  a 
clearer  one  that  all  the  left-out  humbler  portion  of  Bel- 
mont society  would  be  intensely  disappointed,  and  that 
she,  Mrs.  Dexter,  could  condescend  to  them  from  a 
loftier  privileged  height  than  ever  ! 

It  was  the  same  mistaken  principle  of  happiness  as  that 
upon  which  certain  of  the  Newport  multi-millionaires 
have  built  such  barriers  between  their  sea-lawns  and  the 
famous  "cliff-walk,"  which  has  always  been  free  to  the 
public,  that  the  latter  can  not  so  much  as  glance  across 
their  vast  proprietary  swards  !  "It's  English,  you  know," 
to  hide  your  beautiful  things  behind  a  wall  from  your 
neighbors'   enjoyment,  just  as    to   Mrs.    Dexter   a    house- 


78  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

wedding  which  every-day  Behiiont  could  not  see  was  *'  New 
York,  "  and  probably  those  eternal  aristocrats,  the  angels, 
smile  quite  as  sadly  over  the  6ne  mundane  standard  of 
swelldom  as  over  the  other.  "My  thoughts  are  not  your 
thoughts,  saith  "  their  "Lord,  neither  are  your  ways  my 
ways !  ' ' 

The  gallant  and  genial  bridegroom-elect  was  also  disap- 
pointed at  Mrs.  Dexter' s  arrangement.  He  would  have 
been  so  proud  to  walk  down  the  church  aisle  with  his 
sunny  little  bride  on  his  arm,  particularly — and  this  is  not 
always  the  luck  of  short  bridegrooms — as  their  respective 
heights  matched  so  well.  But  when  Mrs.  Dexter  explained 
to  him  that  Fanny  (who  would  have  faced  the  Roman  le- 
gions with  composure)  felt  a  shrinking  about  being  married 
so  publicly, — "  she's  a  sort  of  timid  wild-flower,  you  know 
— a— h,"  Mr.  Howe  felt  how  far  finer  than  his  own  were 
his  bride's  sensibilities,  and  was  only  too  glad  to  sym- 
pathize in  her  desire.  Poor  man  !  At  the  very  altar  he 
was  to  begin  the  role  of  giving  up  which  he  was  never  to 
lay  down  until  the  end. 

Among  the  invitations  to  the  wedding  was  the  following: 

My  Dear  Mr.  Thayer  : 

Did  you  know  that  I  am  actually  going  soon  to  take  upon  me  the 
cares  and  responsibilities  of  wedded  life  I — and  that  the  "day"  is  fixed 
for  Thursday,  June  30  ?  Won't  you  come  with  my  other  friends  from  a 
distance  and  see  me  '•'■sacnficed  !  !  "  And  besides,  now  that  I  am  going  to 
settle  down  into  a  steady  old  married  woman,  can't  you  trust  me  with  that 
famous  secret  you  always  said  I  was  "  too  gay  and  unformed  "  to  hear  ? 
Now  don't  disappoint 

Your  old  friend 

Fan/ 

P.  S.     I  wonder  whether  anything  in  married  life  will  be  half  as 
pleasant  as  some  things  ou^  of  it  ?  " 


NEW  YORK;   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  79 

"He  will  send  me  a  present,  any  way,"  said  the  busi- 
ness-like Fanny,  as  she  mailed  this  reckless  epistle. 

*'So,"  said  Harvey  Thayer  to  himself  when  he  received 
it,  ''the  pretty  moth  loved  the  candle,  after  all,  did  it, 
and  wants  to  singe  its  wings  a  little  more?  Well,  I'll  go 
up  there  and  tell  her  the  'secret'  and  see  how  she  likes  it." 

Not  even  for  the  pleasurable  excitement  he  anticipated, 
however,  would  he  have  taken  the  journey  to  Belmont 
alone.  He  could  never  be  an  hour  without  a  companion, 
so  deadly  a  weight  of  boredom  pressed  upon  him  the 
moment  he  was  left  to  the  vacuity  of  his  own  mind.  So 
with  the  promise  that  "some  fun"  awaited  them  among 
the  pretty  girls  of  Belmont,  he  persuaded  his  intimate 
friend,  a  rich  and  ignorant  and  languid  and  dissipated 
snob  like  himself,  but  whose  mother  was  a  "  Stuyvesant," 
to  go  up  from  New  York  with  him  about  three  weeks 
before  the  wedding. 

When  on  the  evening  of  their  arrival  the  pair  presented 
themselves  at  Mrs.  Dexter' s  in  the  full  panoply  of  citydom 
— as  she  saw  them  little  Fanny's  spirit  melted  within  her. 
Harvey  Thayer  had  now  been  going  into  New  York 
society  for  eighteen  months  and  was  an  acknowledged 
"catch"  even  among  the  self-possessed  and  conquering 
belles  who  led  the  gay  and  exclusive  world  he  loved.  His 
expression  was  critical  and  assured  :  his  dress  wore  the  last 
air  of  fashion :  a  delicate  moustache  graced  his  lip,  and 
the  silky  lengths  of  waving  hair  which  had  so  well  suited 
his  poetic  grace,  were  replaced  by  a  close-cut  elegance  of 
locks  that  showed  the  touch  of  the  highest  tonsorial  art. 

The  parlor  was  full  of  the  family  and  of  company  when 
the  friends  were  ushered  in,  but  before  the  call  was  over 
our  veteran  manceuvrers  found  themselves  in  the  hall,  with 


So  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

faces,  in  their  joy  at  meeting  again,  all  wreathed  as  of 
old  in  their  own  sweetest,  most  coaxing  smiles. 

*'So!"  cried  Fanny,  with  the  most  alluring  glance, 
*<  You've  really  come  up  to  tell  me  the  '  secret,'  have  you?  " 

"■  I  don't  know.     I  haven't  decided." 

*'  The  same  old  tease !     If  not,  what  did  you  come  for?  " 

'*I  came  to  look  at  you,"  he  said,  seriously;  to  look 
you  over,"  scanning  her  very  intently;  *' to  see  if  it  is 
really  the  same  girl  I  used  to  know." 

**  Well—is  it?" 

''Can't  tell;  but  even  if  I  could,  my  opinion  is  of 
small  consequence — is  nothing,  in  fact. ' ' 

''You  are  very  much  mistaken.  Your  opinion  is  of 
great  consequence — is  particularly  valuable  to  me,  and 
always  will  be,  Mr.  Thayer." 

"Sacredly  second  to  that  of  Mr.  Howe,  I  suppose," 
sarcastically.      "  Well,  that's  what  I  call  '  nothing.'  " 

"Just  as  exacting  as  ever!  That's  two  things  you 
haven't  changed  in  !  " 

"Do  you  suppose  I  am  'exacting'  to  everybody? 
Doesn't  it  depend  on — on — certain  feelings,  whether  one 
is  exacting  or  not  ?  ' ' 

"Oh,  don't  ask  me  about  'feelings,'  please!  I'm  not 
learned  in  that  way  at  all.  Really,  Mr.  Thayer,"  in  turn 
looking  at  him  critically  from  head  to  foot — "you're  so 
stylish  you  almost  took  my  breath  away  as  you  came  in  !  " 

"And  you  are  so  coquettish,"  frowning,  "that  you 
almost  take  mine  !  Yes,"  slowly  and  judicially,  "  you  are 
changed,  Miss  Dexter.  There  is  something  hard  and  cold 
about  you,  like  a  woman  of  the  world." 

' '  Nonsense  !  tell  me  the  secret — quick  ! — before  we 
have  to  go  back  into  the  parlor." 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  8i 

"  No,  I  don't  think  I  will ;  not  to  you." 

"  Why  not  to  me?  I'm  not  *  too  gay  and  unformed' 
still — surely  ?  ' ' 

"  N — no;  but  still  you  don't  seem  to  have  any  tender- 
ness. The  woman  I  confide  in  must  have  some  tender- 
ness— some  sympathy." 

*'  I  don't  believe  you've  got  any  secret !  " 

'*  I  don't  believe  you've  got  any  heart !  " 

''  Of  course  not !  "  saucily,  ''  Mr.  Howe  has  it." 

''Pshaw!  stupidity!"  and  he  turned  pettishly  back 
into  the  parlor. 

She  did  not  follow,  and  presently  he  strolled  out  again 
and  found  her  apparently  in  deep  meditation. 

''  You  look  pensive,  Miss  Dexter.  What  are  you  think- 
ing about  ? ' ' 

''Of  nothing  that  would  interest  Mr.  Thayer." 

"  Whatever  interests  Miss  Dexter  interests  me." 

Laughing:   "I'm  afraid  I  can't  return  that  compliment." 

"  Your  '  dearest  friend' — pardon! — I  should  say,  your 
once  dearest  friend,  forgotten  so  soon?"  murmured  he, 
with  tender  reproach. 

"I  don't  think  /  forgot  first,  Mr.  Thayer,"  answered 
she,  becoming  suddenly  grave  and  with  deepening  eyes. 

"But  what  were  you  thinking  about?  You  did  not 
look  happy." 

"All  your  imagination!  I  wouldn't  tell  you  for  a 
million.  Besides,"  laughing,  ''your  secret — the  great 
secret — must  come  first." 

"  Do  you  think  you  can  be  very,  very  sympathetic  with 
a  man's  deep  trouble?  " 

"Oh,  you  frighten  me,"  returning  toward  the  parlor, 
*'  is  it  so  very  deep?  " 


82  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

And  so  the  fencing  went  on  between  them  for  several 
days  at  more  than  one  daily  interview.  Fanny  knew  he 
was  trying  to  get  on  the  old  footing,  and  even  her  faint 
sense  of  propriety  was  making  a  stand  that  he  should  not. 
For  Harvey  it  was  quite  a  fascinating  little  game.  He 
was  surprised  that  she  held  her  own  so  well,  and  was  quite 
willing  to  prolong  the  bootless  struggle.  Belmont  horses 
were  good  and  Belmont  drives  unsurpassed  for  beauty; 
Mr.  Gardner  now  had  several  young  girls  living  and 
studying  in  his  family,  and  to  the  prettiest  of  these  Harvey 
proceeded  to  make  himself  flirtatiously  agreeable.  May 
Gardner,  too,  who  was  but  thirteen  when  Harvey  left  Bel- 
mont, and  whose  childish  heart  had  adored  him,  had  shot 
up  into  a  slim,  graceful,  naive  girl  of  fifteen,  and  as  Mrs. 
Gardner  noted  his  soft  glance  resting  complacently  upon 
her,  and  her  mantling  cheek  in  return,  she  trembled  as 
might  a  mother-hen  who  sees  the  ruthless  kite  hovering 
over  her  brood. 

So  between  the  Gardners  and  the  Dexters  and  the 
horses  Harvey  was  passing  his  time  very  pleasantly  indeed, 
and  his  friend  was  imitating  him  as  well  as  he  could,  when 
one  evening,  after  the  early  country  tea,  Harvey  walked 
over  to  Mrs.  Dexter' s  and  said  abruptly  and  gloomily  to 
Fanny:  ''It's  a  lovely  evening,  and  there  will  be  a 
moon.  Will  you  walk  up  the  brook  with  me,  and*  I  will 
tell  you  the  '  secret. '  ' ' 

Fanny  started,  and  echoed:  '''Up  the  brook?*  I 
haven't  been  there  since  we  used  to  go  there  two  years 
ago." 

"The  best  of  reasons  for  going  once  again.  We  didn't 
bid  it  a  formal  'good-bye,'  I  believe;"  then,  most 
appealingly,  and  looking  the  picture  of  wretchedness  as 


NEIV   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  83 

she  hesitated  and  once  or  twice  shook  her  head — "  can 
you  refuse  me,  Fanny — refuse  me  this  last  favor — for  we 
are  going  to-morrow?" 

She  did  not,  she  would  not  think,  and  wrapping  herself 
in  a  white  woolen  nubia  or  *' cloud,"  as  the  girls  called 
them  in  those  days,  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  they  were 
sauntering  up  the  grassy  banks  of  a  secluded  ravine  through 
which  wound  a  little  transparent  stream  in  S  after  S — each 
totally  different  from  the  others  and  each  more  charming 
than  the  last.  They  walked  rather  silently,  for  Fanny's 
heart  was  strangely  full,  and  Harvey  was  considering  what 
to  say  and  how  to  say  it.  At  last  they  came  to  a  hidden, 
exquisite  dell  where  for  a  few  yards  nature's  darling  rushed 
over  its  rocky  bed  in  fairy  rapids  and  cascades  between 
meeting  and  over-hanging  trees.  On  the  interlacing  roots 
of  these  the  youthful  pair  seated  themselves,  and  at  first, 
in  unwonted,  fateful  silence,  watched  the  sweet  hurrying 
water  while  the  falling  twilight  darkened  round  them. 
As  if  unconsciously,  Harvey  laid  aside  his  hat  and  lifted 
his  brow  that  the  soft  evening  breeze  might  blow  over  it. 
Then  he  turned  toward  his  companion  and  bent  his  gaze 
steadily  upon  the  wistful  little  face  that  questioned  his, 
and  whose  clear  and  delicate  coloring  amid  her  summer 
draperies  of  pale  blue  and  white,  made  her  at  that  moment 
so  poetic  a  vision  of  spotless  maidenhood. 

Suddenly  Harvey  seized  the  hand  of  the  trembling  girl 
and  said  in  a  low,  hopeless  tone :  * '  Fanny,  my  secret  is 
that  I  loved  you,  but  you  were  so  young  and  so  thought- 
less that  I  forbore  to  tell  it  till  a  few  more  years  had 
taught  you  your  own  heart.  The  news  of  your  marriage 
came  upon  me  like  a  thunder-bolt.  You  were  in  haste 
indeed!  " 


84  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Fanny  grew  pale  and  cold  as  death. 

*'Why,  Harvey!  I  thought;  you  were  only  flirting.  I 
never  supposed  you  really  cared  for  me.  Besides,  you 
knew  that  Mr.  Howe  had  offered  himself,  and  that  my 
parents  wished  me  to  marry  him." 

"Didn't  j^a  wish  to  marry  him?  Which  were  you 
flirting  with,  him  or  me?  " 

'*  I  had  no  idea  you  cared  for  me,"  reiterated  Fanny. 

"That  isn't  the  point.  Did  you  care  for  7ne !  Did 
you  give  me  any  reason  to  suppose  that  you  cared  for  me 
— I  don't  mean  in  looks  and  words,  but  in  deeds?  You 
did  not  break  ofl"  with  Mr.  Howe.  You  did  not  return 
him  his  letters  or  his  gifts  and  tell  him  your  whole  heart 
could  not  be  his.  In  fact,  not  being  sure  of  me,  you 
thought  best  to  keep  on  with  him.  Now,  Fanny,"  rising 
and  standing  before  her  and  speaking  with  a  grand  air — 
"I  never  will  be  loved  calculatingly.  The  girl  I  choose 
must  be  willing  to  risk  everything,  give  up  everything, 
blindly,  for  me  and  to  me." 

She,  too,  rose  and  faced  him  with  wild,  pleading  eyes 
and  quivering  lips.  "Harvey,  you  never  said  even  once 
that  you  loved  me." 

"  No,  and  I  shall  never  say  it  to  a  girl  I  am  not  sure 
of.  I  looked  for  some  absolute  token  from  you,  but  it 
never  came.  You  laughed,  even,  as  you  told  me  good- 
bye. Fanny,  to  see  a  girl  flirt  as  you  did  with  two  men  at 
once,  shakes  my  faith  in  woman  !  " 

Perfectly  overwhelmed  with  disappointed  love,  with  the 
contrast  between  what  she  might  have  been  as  Mrs.  Harvey 
Thayer  and  what  she  would  be  as  Mrs.  David  Howe,  and 
with  that  sense  of  debasement  which  Harvey  knew  so  well 
how  to  infuse  into  the  girls  he  was  rejecting,  so  that  they 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  85 

thought  it  was  only  their  own  unworthiness  that  was  at 
fault, — poor  little  Fanny  burst  into  a  passion  of  tears,  sob- 
bing out,  ''What  shall  I  do!  What  shall  I  do  !  "  in  the 
most  heartrending  manner. 

The  selfish  youth  was  really  touched.  After  all,  he  had 
never  had  anything  but  pleasure  from  this  thoughtless 
trifler.  She  had  not  pursued  and  wearied  him  with  the 
complaints  and  reproaches  of  hopeless  passion  as  had  some 
other  wounded  hearts,  but  had  dropped  him  as  gaily  as  he 
had  her.  Why  had  he  come  up  here  to  gratify  his  love  of 
conquest  and  to  cloud  her  marriage  festivities?  He  was 
always  drawn  to  children  and  to  all  innocent  and  helpless 
things,  and  suddenly  he  felt  a  depth  of  tenderness  for  the 
uoe-smitten  little  bride-elect  that  suri)rised  himself. 

He  put  his  arm  round  her  and  whispered:  *'Did  you 
really  love  me,  then,  Fanny,  after  all?" 

She  sank  to  his  embrace,  sobbing:  "I  always  loved  you. 
but  I  thought  you  didn't  care  for  me.     I  idolize  you  !  " 

**At  least  we  will  have  one  last  hour  of  happiness 
together,"  breathed  he,  covering  her  with  kisses, — and  so 
in  delicious  passion  and  sadness  mingled,  her  head  on  his 
breast  as  other  fair  tragic  heads  had  lain  there  before,  did 
the  two  flirts  pass  the  dusky  hours,  the  brook  rippling  its 
now  sad  little  song  below  them,  and  the  leaves  whispering 
and  sighing  above  them,  until  the  moonbeams  sifted  coldly 
down,  and  even  the  reckless,  imprudent  Fanny  felt  that 
she  must  return.  Had  she  hoped  from  moment  to  moment 
that  the  declaration  would  come, — that  he  would  say, 
*'  Even  now,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  be  my  wife  instead  of 
Mr.  Howe's?" 

Alas,  no  !  As  they  rose  to  go  he  said  in  well-simulated 
tones  of  grief:    ''If  I   had  only  known — if  I  had  only 


S6  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

guessed  of  this  before !  But  now  it  is  too  late.  I  should 
esteem  it  the  last  dishonor  to  rob  another  man  of  his 
bride." 

Wicked,  diabolical  liar  and  thief! — and  had  he  not, 
that  very  hour,  robbed  his  fellow-man  of  the  spiritual  bride 
that  alone  gave  the  visible  one  her  value — changed  the 
maiden  soul  into  a  base  pander  that  could  deliberately 
barter  its  outer  personality  for  a  name  and  a  bread-winner  ? 
Had  Harvey  Thayer  stayed  away  from  Belmont,  the 
episode  of  a  year  and  a  half  before  would  have  been  so 
bedimmed  in  the  volatile  Fanny's  memory  by  the  pre- 
occupations of  actual  life — her  real  engagement  and  ap- 
proaching marriage  to  Mr.  Howe  would  have  made  her  so 
one  with  him  regarding  all  the  outlook  of  her  future,  that 
she  might  have  gone  to  the  altar  in  a  mood  at  least  affec- 
tionate and  loyal  to  the  bridegroom  from  whom  she  had 
already  received  so  much  and  was  there  to  receive  every- 
thing;— and  now  this  false  one's  dazzling,  delusive  image 
had  come  between  and  made  the  true  lover  a  horror.  To 
the  one  her  whole  soul  passionately  clung — from  the  other 
as  passionately  revolted. 

When  the  torturer  left  the  unhappy  child  at  her  own 
door,  she  ran  through  the  hall  without  heeding  her  moth- 
er's call  from  the  parlor,  and  flying  up  stairs  to  her  own 
room  she  locked  herself  in.  But  Mrs.  Dexter,  who  ever 
since  Mr.  Thayer's  unexpected  appearance  had  been  hop- 
ing almost  against  hope  that  her  ambitious  dreams  would 
fulfil  themselves  in  spite  of  the  wedding  day  fixed  for  the 
next  fortnight,  could  not  rest  until  she  had  learned  the 
meaning  of  the  evening  walk.  She  mounted  after  her 
daughter,  and  finding  the  door  fastened,  begged  to  be  let 
in.     Fanny  let  her  entreat  several  minutes,  for  in  truth  she 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  87 

felt  desperate,  and  wanted  to  be  left  to  herself.  At  last, 
however,  she  yielded,  but  no  sooner  did  her  mother  enter 
with:  "Why,  my  dear  Frances,  what  is  the  matter?" 
than  she  burst  out  into  the  most  violent  hysterics,  and 
abandoned  herself  to  a  wild,  determined  uncontrol  that 
testified  well  to  her  perfectly  undisciplined  nature.  ''She 
hated  Mr.  Howe !  She  never  would  marry  him !  She 
was  perfectly  miserable  !  Her  heart  was  broken  !  Her 
parents  had  bartered  her  away  !  They  had  engaged  her 
when  she  was  a  mere  child  !  All  they  thought  of  was  to  get 
rid  of  her  as  soon  as  possible  !  etc. ,  etc. ' ' 

''But,  my  daughter!"  said  Mrs.  Dexter,  soothingly, 
"  surely  if  Mr.  Thayer  loves  you  it  is  not  impossible  to 
break  the  engagement  with  David.  He  would  never  wish 
to  lead  an  unwilling  bride  to  the  altar.  He  would  infinitely 
rather  give  you  up  than  have  you  suffer !  " 

"No,  no,"  moaned  Fanny.  "I  know  that  Harvey 
considers  it  dishonorable  to  influence  a  girl  to  break  an 
engagement." 

Mrs.  Dexter  'gave  up  all  hope  :  "  What  did  he  want  to 
come  up  here  for,  then?  "  she  cried,  angrily.  "  Wretch  ! 
to  drive  you  half  crazy  only  two  weeks  before  your  wedding 
day!" 

Toward  morning  the  exhausted  girl  dropped  asleep  and 
did  not  waken  even  at  the  shrill  whistle  of  the  early  train 
that  carried  the  two  friends  back  to  New  York,  for  Harvey 
had  decided  that  it  was  best  to  beat  an  instant  retreat — 
one  grand  dramatic  scene  with  each  lady-love  being  the 
utmost  that  his  fatigued  spirit  could  bear. 

Fanny  felt  a  death-pang  when  she  heard  of  his  departure, 
and  in  truth  something  then  died  within  her  selfish  heart 
that  never  rose  to  life  again.     It  was  but  a  fragile  flower  that 


88  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

had  waved  above  the  original  soil  of  her  shallow  nature. 
Once  torn  up  and  flung  aside  it  withered  instantly  away 
and  no  similar  root  ever  penetrated  that  dry  and  stony 
ground.  During  the  ensuing  weeks  she  resigned  herself 
with  resolute  philosophy  to  her  hard  fate.  Her  spirit  rose 
with  the  excitement  and  bustle  of  preparation  about  her ; 
her  bridesmaids  and  intimate  friends  arrived,  and  she  was 
able  to  receive  her  lover,  if  not  with  effusion,  at  least  with 
surface  smiles  and  pleasure  sufficient  to  confirm  him  m 
perfect  happiness  and  trust. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

WEDDING    NUMBER    TWO. 

Fanny  Dexter  was  one  of  those  fortunately  organized 
beings  whose  spontaneous  command  of  their  faculties  is 
such  that  they  always  ''rise  to  an  emergency"  and  are 
always  "equal  to  the  occasion;"  consequently,  unlike 
Julia,  as  a  bride  she  looked  her  very  best. 

Mr.  Calvert  now  first  disclosed  his  disapproval  of  the 
way  that  Julia's  veil  had  been  put  on  by  insisting  on  ad- 
justing Fanny's  himself,  and  with  such  success,  that,  as 
her  mother  exclaimed  admiringly,  she  looked  "just  sweet 
enough  to  eat!"  One  of  Fanny's  unfailing  charms,  in 
fact,  was  the  peculiarly  clean  effect  of  her  transparent 
skin  and  perfectly  arranged  hair — and  her  long  white 
satin  dress  and  snowy  veil  and  wreath  crowned  her  on 
this  occasion  with  a  special  immaculateness  that  was  most 
appropriate.  The  bridesmaids  could  not  afford  dresses 
alike  for  the  occasion,  but  as  each  happened  to  have  a 
fresh  evening  silk  of  bright  color,  and  all  different,  what 
with  white  sashes,  flowers  and  gloves  they  looked  suffi- 
ciently their  part,  and,  glorified  by  the  usual  serene  mir- 
acle of  Miss  Eaton's  beauty,  whose  toilette  of  the  then 
fashionable  corn-color  could  not  have  been  more  becom- 
ing, they  made  a  very  gay  and  attractive  group.  The 
bridegroom  was  radiant,  Mrs.  Dexter  lofty  and  benignant 
in   regulation  mauve,   and   Julia  exquisite  in  pale  pink 


90  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

moire  trimmed  with  delicate  lace.  True  that  Mrs.  Dex- 
ter's  attention  and  her  purse  Had  been  so  absorbed  by  the 
demands  of  the  outer  man  of  her  guests — by  her  gratifica- 
tion of  their  "  lust  Of  the  eye  " — that  the  wants  of  the  in- 
ner she  had  a  second  time  grandly  left  to  fate.  But  a  sec- 
ond time  was  her  faith  rewarded  by  her  neighbors  stepping 
in  at  the  eleventh  hour  and  furnishing  forth  the  wedding 
supper. 

All  Belmont — that  is — all  high-placed  Belmont,  was 
there  in  its  very  best,  vaguely  conscious  that  a  new  era 
had  dawned,  and  that,  ridiculous  as  Mrs.  Dexter  was,  she 
had  established  a  precedent  in  weddings  which  must  in 
future  be  maintained.  The  lady  felt  not  the  slightest 
sense  of  obligation  for  the  feast  which  her  friends  had 
spread  upon  her  board  without  cost  or  trouble  to  herself. 
She  was  a  thorough  egotist,  and  every  egotist  is  a  mass  of 
ingratitude.  In  her  own  estimation  she  was  the  benefac- 
tress of  this  benighted  little  town  who  more  than  squared 
her  neighborly  debts  by  simply  showing  people  how  to  do 
things.  The  missionary  zeal  and  spirit  were  so  strong 
within  her  that  the  vulgar  consideration  of  ''who  pays" 
never  troubled  her  for  an  instant.  There  was,  in  short, 
but  one  small,  very  small  spot  on  the  sun  of  this  brilliant 
— this  almost  astonishing  success. 

Among  the  relatives  present  from  a  distance  were  a  sea- 
captain  and  his  family.  He  had  just  returned  from  the 
tropics  and  had  brought  with  him  two  flower-wreaths,  ex- 
actly alike,  made  of  fairy  snow-white  shells.  He  gave  one 
to  Fanny,  who  thriftily  decided  to  use  it  instead  of  provid- 
ing one  of  orange-blossoms,  and  the  other  to  his  own  very 
plain  and  dowdy  daughter;  and  she,  totally  oblivious  of 
the  fitness  of  things,  just  before  dressing  for  the  great  oc- 


NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  91 

casion  naively  announced  that  she  was  going  to  wear  her's 
too  !  The  Dexter  ladies  were  almost  paralyzed  with  dis- 
may and  disgust,  but  there  was  no  time  to  procure  any 
substitute- wreath,  and  the  fact  that  the  bride  was  not  ' '  the 
one  and  the  only  * '  to  wear  the  bridal  crown  at  her  own 
wedding,  was  no  doubt  caused  by  that  mysterious  but 
faithful  sympathy  of  inanimate  things  with  human  affairs 
which  is  always  writing  runic  warnings  on  the  wall  before- 
hand, but  which  we  never  can  read  until  after  the  event. 

The  cheerful  Fanny  had  always  determined  to  dance  at 
her  own  wedding,  partly  because  she  was  so  fond  of  danc- 
ing, and  partly  because  not  to  display  herself  to  the  great- 
est advantage  on  the  only  time  in  her  life  when  she  could 
be  invested  with  the  poetry  and  becomingness  of  bridal 
white  and  veil,  would  have  been  to  her  clear  and  practical 
mind  simply  irrational.  As  Terpischore  certainly  ought 
to  be  the  presiding  muse  at  youthful  nuptials,  Fanny  was 
quite  right  in  her  decision,  and  Belmont  people  could  not 
remember  when  they  had  enjoyed  themselves  so  much — 
the  young  in  dancing  with  the  graceful,  gracious  creature, 
and  the  old  in  looking  on. 

In  the  midst  of  the  gaiety  and  animation,  who  should 
suddenly  appear  at  the  drawing-room  door  in  all  the  fas- 
cination of  dress-suits — (men  never  completely  throw  off 
the  animal  except  in  evening-dress),  but  the  ruthless  Har- 
vey Thayer  and  his  friend  !  The  unconscionable  flirt  had 
actually  come  up  from  New  York  to  give  his  vanity  of 
conquest  the  luxury — first  of  beholding  a  bride  of  whose 
expected  tragic  pallor  and  breaking  heart  he  himself 
should  be  the  conscious  cause ;  and  then  of  sensationally 
ending  the  whole  unhallowed  episode  by  a  few  last  whis- 
pered thrilling  words  of  passion  and  despair,   yes,  under 


92  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

her  bridegroom's  very  eyes,  and  when  the  church-service 
had  just  made  her  a  sworn  ar^d  lawful  wife !  The  blase 
sybarite's  veins  were  in  a  tingle  with  the  unique  exquisite- 
ness  of  the  excitement. 

At  any  other  time,  such  a  presence  from  those  far  inac- 
cessible circles  in  her  own  house  and  in  the  sight  of  all 
Belmont,  would  have  been  to  Mrs.  Dexter  the  climax — the 
transport,  of  social  bliss  ;  but  now  for  a  moment  she  could 
have  murdered  him.  **  How  would  Fanny  take  it  ?  "  she 
almost  gasped  to  herself. 

The  charming  bride,  however,  was  at  the  moment  so 
elate — was  floating  so  buoyantly  on  the  crest  of  the  social 
wave,  that  not  even  Harvey's  subduing  beauty  and  crush- 
ing New  York  get-up  could  dash  her  light-heartedness. 
His  supposed  victim  greeted  him  smilingly,  introduced 
him  to  Mr.  Howe,  and  said  audibly  and  sweetly  that  she 
hoped  she  should  soon  receive  the  wedding  cards  of  him- 
self and  the  young  lady  she  understood  he  had  been  *'so 
devoted  to  all  winter." 

She  had  not  heard  anything  of  the  kind,  for  there  was 
no  possible  way  by  which  she  could  hear  news  of  him  ;  but 
he  had  not  sent  her  any  wedding  present — that  rich,  rich 
fellow — and  she  had  given  him  all  her  heart !  Had  it 
then,  had  \\.  all  been  for  nothing,  absolutely  nothing — not 
even  a  souvenir — and  after  that  parting?  (So  had  run 
her  mortified  thoughts  continually  this  last  week,  when  by 
every  New  York  express  she  had  expecteci  a  bridal  gift  and 
none  had  appeared.)  No  wonder  she  was  not  in  the  mood 
to  let  him  come  off  first  best  this  time ! 

Surprised  at  this  flippancy  to  him,  and  at  such  an  hour, 
Harvey  returned,  tragically — ''  I  shall  never  marry,  Mrs. 
Howe,"  and  with  marked  emphasis  on  the  ''  Mrs.  Howe." 


NEH^  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  93 

"Oh,  yes,  you  will  I — even  if  'she'  has  given  you  the 
mitten.  Broken  hearts  are  soon  mended,  Mr.  Thayer  ' ' — 
with  a  saucy  little  toss,  ''  and  there  are  as  good  fish  in  the 
sea  as  ever  were  caught,  you  know.  I  only  hope  you  will 
get  as  good  a  wife  as  I  have  husband  !  " — and  then  she 
turned  resolutely  to  his  friend,  nor  could  Harvey  com- 
mand her  attention  or  win  from  her  a  word  or  a  look  of 
sentimental  rapport  all  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

The  young  gentleman  was  so  discomfitted  that,  though 
Mrs.  Gardner's  pretty  pupil  and  also  her  budding  daughter 
May  were  both  present,  he  made  no  response  to  the  elo- 
quent eyes  of  either  of  them,  and  seemed  entirely  oblivious 
of  the  half-launched  flirtation  with  the  former  to  proceed 
with  which  had  in  fact  been  one  of  his  motives  in  coming 
up.  Even  Miss  Eaton  he  looked  on  languidly  and 
scarcely  addressed — so  disgusted  was  he  with  the  snowy 
little  figure  beside  her.  His  friend,  however,  did  instant 
homage  to  the  beauty,  and  could  not  understand  why  on 
earth  Thayer  insisted  on  dragging  him  back  to  the  forlorn, 
horrid  tavern  at  the  first  decent  moment,  nor  why  he 
looked  so  blue  and  gloomy,  and  said  so  little  as  they 
smoked  their  good-night  cigars. 

When  an  adored  one  is  guilty  of  some  slight  as  incon- 
ceivable as  it  is  unexpected,  the  cultus  is  at  an  end,  and  it 
is  in  this  way  that  most  adorations  of  human  divinities  do 
finish  themselves.  As  a  rule  our  hearts'  idols  care  very 
little  whether  they  remain  on  the  lofty  pedestals  to  which 
we  have  exalted  them,  for  who  does  prize  very  much — who 
does  not  a  little  despise,  or  at  least  undervalue,  that  which 
lies  under  his  feet?  Consequently,  and  always  to  our 
immense  surprise,  our  gods  and  goddesses  are  more  apt 
than  not,  some  day  heedlessly  to  walk  off  over  the  edge, 


94  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  naturally,  with  but  one  result.      We  can't  help  it! 
There  they  lie — smashed  for  u^  for  all  time  to  come. 

This  was  what  had  suddenly  happened  to  Harvey  Thayer 
from  not  having  sent  Fanny  a  wedding  present — her  origi- 
nal thought,  be  it  remembered,  in  writing  to  him  at  all. 
The  first,  last,  irresistible  impulse  of  real  love,  its  only 
infallible  test,  is  giving.  A  man  will  often  give  to  a 
woman  he  does  not,  but  it  is  impossible  for  him  not  to 
give  to  a  woman  he  does  love.  After  her  unveiling  of 
passionate  but  hopeless  devotion,  the  costliest  souvenir 
Harvey  could  have  selected  would  have  seemed  to  Fanny 
but  the  natural  tribute  of  his  tenderness  and  his  re- 
•  gret.  A  "  handsome  "  present  was  the  very  least  she  had 
expected ;  but  when  nothing  had  come,  it  was  to  her  clear 
common  sense  a  cut  inconceivable  save  on  one  most 
humiliating  theory — 'he  had  not  really  appreciated  her — 
he  had  undervalued  her !  Let  relative,  friend  or  lover 
once  realize  this  to  be  his  true  position  in  a  beloved  one's 
mind  and  love  is  done.  Not  to  be  loved  can  be  forgiven 
— not  to  be  appreciated,  never  ! 

So  far  as  Fanny  Dexter  was  concerned,  therefore, 
Harvey  Thayer  had  walked  off  his  pedestal,  and  when  on 
that  wedding  night  he  packed  up  the  faultless  garb  in 
which  he  had  complacently  arrayed  himself  for  unlawful 
conquest,  his  vanity  was  suffering  acutely  from  the  shock. 
He  in  turn  was  experiencing  the  inconceivable — a  snub 
from  a  little  country  thing  to  whom  his  mere  notice  was 
an  honor ! 

Fanny  had  given  him  so  much  without  apparently  ex- 
pecting anything,  that  it  had  not  occurred  to  him  there 
was  a  debit  side  against  him  in  her  little  mind  as  well. 
Had  she  been  of  his  own  circle  a  wedding  gift  would  have 


NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  95 

been  a  matter  of  course,  but  with  her  he  was  always  so 
conscious  of  the  social  gulf  between  them,  that  he  actually 
forgot  the  most  obvious  convenances  of  the  situation  ! 
He  could  not  then  fathom  the  girl's  sudden  change  toward 
him,  but  since  changed  she  evidently  was,  why,  let  every 
shred  of  late-born  sentiment  he  had  toward  her,  go ! 
''  She  was  a  damned  flirt  after  all !  "  was  his  conclusion  of 
the  whole  matter,  and  the  next  morning  he  and  his  friend 
took  the  opposite  train  to  that  which  had  conveyed  away 
the  bridal  pair,  and  went  northward  to  try  and  kill  time 
by  a  summer  trip  in  Canada. 

Of  all  the  comedy  and  tragedy  of  Harvey  Thayer's 
amusement,  what  then  remained? 

For  one  thing,  the  real  injury  done  to  the  unsuspecting 
lover-husband.  He  believed  that  he  was  uniting  to  his 
very  spirit  a  spirit-bride  of  which  the  youthful,  breathing 
form  was  but  the  roseate  incarnation.  Deluded  man ! 
That  form  alone  was  all  that  was  absolutely  his  own. 

For  the  rest,  Julia's  marriage  of  sentiment  merely, 
without  passion,  had  been  hazardous  enough;  but  Fanny's 
— but  this  one,  with  nothing  for  its  basis  on  the  woman's 
part  but  worldly  advantage — there  is  but  one  thing  to  be 
said  when  such  a  marriage  is  consummated,  whether  it  be 
that  of  the  ''first  lady  of  the  land"  or  the  last — ''It  is 
not  and  it  cannot  come  to  good  !  ' ' 

Little  Belmont  knew  Harvey  Thayer  no  more — probably 
has  never  known  quite  his  like  again,  as  the  genuinely 
gilded  New  Yorker  rarely  strays  from  the  accustomed 
haunts  of  his  kind.  He  was  reminded  of  Belmont  every 
few  years  by  a  casual  meeting  in  the  street  or  a  theatre- 
lobby  with  his  old  flame.  They  always  spoke  cordially, 
but  he  never  called,   in  spite  of  her  friendly  and  even 


96  NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

coquettish  invitations.  The  balls,  the  dinners,  the  races 
and  the  dissipations  of  the  little  Croesus-world  which  to 
him  was  so  immense,  at  first^  absorbed  his  puerile  energies, 
and  later,  strange  to  say,  their  places  were  taken  by  the 
real  interests  of  the  Infinite  World  to  come. 

Driving  home  an  aunt  one  day  whose  pet  and  heir  he 
was,  as  he  turned  into  the  park  gates  of  her  summer  home, 
a  wheel  caught  and  upset  them,  and  the  lady  was  instantly 
killed.  To  our  pleasure-lover  the  shock  was  so  great  that 
the  solemn  truths  which  Mrs.  Gardner  in  Belmont  used 
to  expound  to  him  and  to  her  children  in  the  daily 
Bible  reading,  recurred  to  him  in  all  their  deep  reality. 
In  the  heart  shaken  and  softened  by  horror  and  grief 
the  good  seed  sprang  up,  and,  impossible  as  it  once 
had  seemed,  Harvey  Thayer  became  a  reformed  and  a 
religious  man. 

Almost  immediately  after,  he  paid  his  serious  addresses 
to  the  favorite  cousin  of  his  "  Stuyvesant  "  friend.  Thou2:h 
not  pretty,  she  was  pleasant,  well-connected  and  good, 
and  superior  though  she  was  to  him  both  in  birth  and 
education,  his  fascinations  and  his  money  plead  quite  as 
successfully  for  him  when  he  was  in  earnest  as  they  gen- 
erally had  when  he  was  in  play.  The  marriage  made  him 
one  with  the,  to  him,  sacred  old  Knickerbocker  circle  to 
which  he  had  always  aspired.  His  mind  was  too  enervated 
for  him  to  attempt  any  pursuit  whatever,  or  he  would  have 
taken  orders  in  the  Episcopal  church,  and  so  added  another 
to  the  many  shallow,  despotic,  and  superstitious  *'  priests  " 
— as  they  now  call  themselves — of  that  once  **  Protestant  " 
communion.  Instead,  he  vegetated  for  twenty  years  on  a 
lovely  estate  on  the  Hudson,  and  when  just  on  the  point 
of  moving  to  New  York,  in  order  that  his  only  son  might 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  97 

go  to  Columbia  and  the  eldest  of  his  three  pretty  daughters 
be  brought  out  into  society,  he  suddenly  died. 

The  mourning  delayed  the  debut  of  the  lovely  Valen- 
tina — for  thus  was  she  baptized — but  a  year,  and  then  she 
made  her  entrance  into  the  fashionable  world  with  all  the 
prestige  that  opulence,  position  and  beauty  could  give. 
She  was  so  rich,  so  fairy-like  and  so  sweet  that  society 
melted  before  her.  Wooers  flocked  about  her,  but  she 
was  so  rigidly  chaperoned  that  she  had  no  real  liberty  of 
choice,  and  before  the  winter  was  out,  she  gave  her  hand, 
as  her  mother  advised,  to  the  richest  and  the  best-born  of 
them  all — to  a  well-known  society  '^  sport"  somewhat 
bald  and  weather-beaten  and  twice  her  nineteen  years. 
A  perfect  horsewoman,  she  is  now  one  of  the  reigning 
married  belles  of  the  ''  hunting  set"  of  the  envied  ''  four 
hundred,"  and  her  young  heart  is  vibrating  to  the  woes 
and  aspirations  of  the  cool  magnetic  male  flirts  about  her, 
much  as  those  of  her  own  father's  youthful  flames  used  to 
vibrate  to  his.  It  is  the  married,  not  the  unmarried 
women  that  Harvey  Thayer  the  Second  and  his  friends 
pursue  to-day,  and  how  long  it  will  be  before  the  sensitive 
Valentina's  soul  takes  fire  from  what  it  is  exposed  to,  some 
of  the  experienced  are  looking  and  waiting  to  see. 

Her  excellent  remaining  parent  divides  her  time  be- 
tween her  social  ''duties  "  and  the  so-called  "  charities," 
while  waiting  to  pilot  her  much  younger  daughters  over 
the  summer  sea  which  glitters  exclusively  for  those  pos- 
sessing Stuyvesant-Thayer  advantages. 

I  have  been  told  by  foreigners,  and  judging  from  foreign 
novels  I  infer,  that  in  Europe  parents  do  not  dare  to  leave 
their  young  people  together  for  fear  of  the  flirtations  and 
scandals  that  might  ensue.     The  young  men  are  not  to  be 


98  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

trusted.  And  are  New  York  mothers  afraid  that  New 
York  sons  cannot  be  trusted,  that  they  have  copied  the 
English  and  the  French  ideas  of  perpetual  guardianship 
and  surveillance  for  daughters? 

Governesses  and  maids  surround  every  impulse  with  a 
compressing  and  suffocating  atmosphere,  and  when  fin- 
ished with  these,  the  anxious  mama  and  the  vigilant  chap- 
eron take  their  places  to  prove  that  in  this  free  land  it  is 
possible  for  a  free-born  American  to  reach  womanhood  as 
mentally  swathed  and  bound  as  a  chrysalis  in  its  shell.  In 
this  undeveloped  state  is  consummated,  the  earlier  the  bet- 
ter, the  child's  marriage  to  a  rich  native  or  to  a  foreign 
title,  and  then  she  is  launched  to  float  like  an  untaught 
butterfly  whither  fate  may  waft  her  ! 

And  opulent  people  the  country  over  who  are  striving 
for  social  position,  imitate  Mrs.  Stuyvesant-Thayer  and  her 
*'  four  hundred  "  exclusive  friends,  because  such  constitute 
'^  New  York"  swelldom,  and  borrow  their  gyves  and  their 
fetters  to  put  on  ^ket'r  heiresses  also,  in  order  that  as  many 
American  girls  as  possible  may  receive  the  reigning 
metropolitan  stamp. 

As  late  as  1880  the  chaperon  was  unknown  in  Chicago. 
About  that  time  she  established  herself  there  and  twelve 
years  after  she  made  her  appearance  at  Indianapolis. 
Thus  westward  does  the  Star  of  Slavery  take  its  way. 
Poor  America — poor  betrayed  Colossa  of  the  Ages! 
What  would  feel  those  wise  and  ardent  women  who 
nursed  you  a  hundred  years  ago,  true  and  glorious 
helpmeets  of  the  loftiest  statesmen  who  ever  lived, 
could  they  behold  the  degenerate  daughters  who  gossip 
and  lounge  in  your  mighty  shadow,  and  look  carelessly  on 
while  your  swift  and  tireless  enemies  daily  dig  beneath 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  99 

your  feet  the  pit  into  which  you  have  already  sunk — even 
to  the  knees  f 

Not  after  life's  '^  fitful  fever"  but  after  its  stagnant 
pool,  Harvey  Thayer  sleeps  in  a  forgotten  grave.  Liter- 
ally "rolling  in  wealth,"  at  the  top  of  the  most  arrogant 
social  circle  in  America,  therefore  with  the  range  of  his 
country's  greatest  possibilities  within  his  horizon,  his  epi- 
taph, like  those  of  most  of  his  acquaintance,  might  justly 
have  been, — "He  was  born:  he  lived:  he  died."  He 
never  spent  anything  like  his  income.  It  simply  went  pil- 
ing on  and  up  above  him  like  a  huge  gold  bastion  against 
which  he,  a  pigmy,  passively  reclined.  So  little  did  he 
feel  the  obligations  of  such  wealth,  that  even  to  the  Epis- 
copal church,  the  only  organization  except  his  club  to 
which  his  consciousness  extended,  and  which  commanded 
him  to  send  forth  the  gospel  "  to  every  creature,"  he  gave 
but  a  thousand  dollars  a  year — five  hundred  to  his  clergy- 
man's salary  and  the  rest  to  church  charities  and  mis- 
sions ;  nor  did  he  leave  it  in  his  will  one  single  cent ! 

Fanny  Dexter' s  other  exceptional  friend,  the  once  peer- 
less Isabal  Eaton,  sleeps  likewise  her  last  sleep.  Within 
two  years  after  Fanny's  marriage,  she  placidly  gave  her 
hand,  as  great  beauties  so  often  do,  to  a  city  wooer  as 
poor  in  every  other  attraction  as  he  was  rich  in  securi- 
ties and  stocks.  The  soft,  indolent  houri  soon  found  her- 
self a  mother,  and  with  the  new  relation  became  startlingly 
changed.  Self  was  not  only  forgotten.  It  was  martyred, 
and  her  really  irrational,  almost  wild  maternal  devotion  to 
her  little  ones  swiftly  transformed  into  a  touching  nursery 
ghost  the  once  wonderful  ball-room  rose — and  then  in  a 
few  years  more  the  lovely  ghost  had  vanished  too  !  Her 
perfect  woman's  person,  as  a  beautiful  woman's  should, 


loo  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

had  enshrined  a  deep  and  intense  woman's  soul  after 
all!  , 

Well  in  a  world  of  human  ugliness  and  stupidity  may 
we  yield  the  tribute  of  a  sigh  to  this  Isabel  and  this  Har- 
vey— to  these  two  fair  and  fascinating,  these  gifted  and 
harmonious  beings,  whom  nature  had  dowered  so  lavishly 
that  they  might  easily  have  been  consummate  masters  in 
the  Art  of  Living,  and  through  the  whole  of  it  have  con- 
ferred exquisite  joys  and  delights  wherever  they  went  and 
upon  whomsoever  they  knew.  But  in  childhood  no  one 
placed  their  steps  on  the  upward  path  of  resolute  self-im- 
provement and  self-control,  and  so  instead  they  remained 
hardly  more  than  pathetic  negations. 

Let  us  believe  that  in  Paradise  they  are  granted  a  better 
chance,  and  that  there  we  shall  one  day  meet  them,  their 
ignorance  enlightened,  their  mistakes  all  righted,  their 
beauties  and  their  graces  a  thousand  and  a  thousand  fold 
enhanced ! 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

THE    *' LITTLE    HOUSEKEEPER." 

After  the  hollow  festivity  of  her  wedding,  Fanny  and 
Mr.  Howe  spent  the  honeymoon  most  appropriately  amid 
the  glare,  gaiety  and  extravagance  of  the  then  Saratoga. 
The  bride  cast  care  and  regrets  to  the  winds,  and  enjoyed 
the  driving  and  dancing,  the  dressing  and  promenading  as 
only  such  natures  can.  She  did  not  flirt,  naturally,  for 
she  was  with  Mr.  Howe  all  the  time,  but  she  saw,  as  she 
said  to  herself,  ''  lots  "  of  men  with  whom  she  would  have 
liked  to  flirt.  Ah  !  if  it  had  only  been  her  fate  to  come  to 
this  paradise  a  girl  instead  of  married  ! 

When  they  returned  to  the  city  they  boarded  only  until 
they  could  find  a  house,  and  by  dint  of  Fanny's  energy 
they  succeeded  in  obtaining  what  they  desired  without 
having  to  wait  until  the  following  May.  Not  only  was 
Mr.  Howe  the  junior  partner  of  his  old  and  extensive  firm. 
He  had  always  been  prudent  enough  to  lay  by  for  the 
future,  and  he  had  been  fortunate  in  the  investment  of  his 
savings.  Fanny  thus  started  on  the  voyage  of  life  much 
more  brilliantly  than  Julia — sails  set  and  pennants  flying. 
Her  interest  in  furnishing  her  house  was  intense,  and  her 
bargaining  and  wheedling  over  every  article  impressive — 
her  whole  gamut  of  persuasion  being  brought  into  play 
from  playful  coaxing  to  imperious  demand.     As  in  dress, 


I02  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

her  taste  in  house-belongings  was  gay,  not  to  say  gaudy, 
but  the  ensemble  of  the  home^  was  cheerful,  like  its  mis- 
tress, and  when  Mrs.  Dexter,  earlier  than  usual,  came 
down  from  the  country,  she  felt  such  bliss  on  entering  its 
well-warmed,  well-carpeted,  sunny  and  semi-luxurious 
rooms,  that  for  the  moment  her  cup  was  almost  too  full. 
Most  remarkable  of  all,  Mr.  Howe  had  a  passion  for  pict- 
ures— '*  paintings,"  he  and  Fanny  called  them — and  was 
discriminating  enough  to  prefer  pleasing  and  characteristic 
American  originals  to  gloomy  and  meaningless  foreign 
copies.  So  their  drawing  and  dining  room  walls,  instead 
of  the  apologies  for  pictures  of  most  young  households, 
had  actually  something  "■  not  bad  "  in  oils  or  water  color 
in  all  their  principal  divisions. 

Fanny  bore  out  her  mother's  sobriquet  and  made  a 
capital  housekeeper.  Her  organizing,  executive  faculty 
now  found  a  congenial  sphere.  She  had  no  intention  to 
economize  or  to  stint  herself,  and  she  did  not  j  but  neither 
was  there  any  confusion,  dirt  or  waste  about  her  establish- 
ment. From  her  attics  to  her  cellar,  from  her  laces  to  her 
rag-bags,  everything  was  in  perfect  order  and  exquisitely 
neat.  She  generally  did  her  own  marketing,  as  of  course 
every  ideal  housekeeper  does.  Her  table  was  American, 
abundant  and  satisfactory.  In  cookery  she  did  not  go 
beyond  the  elements  she  had  known  in  Belmont,  but  these 
she  maintained  inflexibly.  Like  Julia,  she  never  helped 
her  servants,  nor  ever  spared  them,  and  got  out  of  them 
still  more  than  her  older  sister.  Whether  she  rained 
embroidered  and  fluted  white  skirts  into  their  washtubs,  or 
had  frequent  lunch  or  dinner  company,  Sundays  included, 
they  patiently  endured  the  burden  and  fulfilled  the  task, 
and  she  never  apologized  or  said  '  *  thank  you ' '   for  it, 


NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  103 

either.  When  they  got  too  tired  they  gave  warning,  and 
with  perfect  facility  she  found  others  to  take  their  places. 
It  is  a  gift — this  unconscious  governing  faculty  that  some 
women  have,  and  servants,  being  in  fact  but  grown-up 
children,  are  always  more  contented  with  such  mistresses 
than  with  any  others.  It  is  the  timorous,  apologetic 
employer  that  they  despise  and  trample  upon. 

As  time  went  on  the  little  housekeeper  proved  herself 
always  beforehand  with  the  seasons.  Her  winter  things 
were  well  in  hand  early  in  the  fall,  and  by  February  her 
spring  sewing  was  thoroughly  finished  up.  She  was  never 
hurried,  nor  ever  felt  herself  driven  by  piles  of  inchoate 
work  behind  her,  as  are  so  many  breathless,  over-weighted 
mothers.  She  could  be  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to 
start  anywhere.  No  proposed  excursion  or  theatre  party 
was  ever  balked  because  she  could  not  join  it  when  asked. 
If  any  change,  or  any  pleasure,  or  any  excitement  was  in 
prospect,  Fanny  Howe  was  always  found  cap-a-pie,  ready 
to  rush  in  and  enjoy  it.  She  could  leave  her  family 
machine  at  any  time,  knowing  that  it  could  run  on  scarce 
conscious  of  her  absence. 

In  short,  her  housekeeping  was  no  trouble  to  her  what- 
ever, but  this  was  not  because  she  thought  so  little  of  it, 
but  because  she  involuntarily  thought  so  strongly  and 
so  much.  Whatever  this  young  woman  had  to  do  was 
always  stereoptically  present  to  her  mind,  all  round  and 
from  beginning  to  end,  and  was  provided  for  in  her 
decision  long  before  the  moment  came  for  it  to  appear  as 
a  practical  reality.  Had  she  been  a  man  she  would  have 
been  as  bold  and  confident  an  "  operator  "  as  the  famously- 
infamous  one  of  her  native  State.  In  truth,  the  secret 
of  housekeeping  is  the  secret  of  success  in  anything.     It 


I04  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPJIOXIC  STUDY. 

merely  means  exceptional  ability — mental  force — whether 
you  call  it  ''  intellectual  "  force  of  not. 

Little  Mrs.  Howe  was  quite  conscious  of  her  housewifely 
prowess,  and  exacted  due  recognition  of  it  from  everyone 
about  her.  She  was  not  therefore  the  ideal  house-mistress 
whose  ministrations  for  the  comfort  of  everyone  fall  as 
noiselessly  as  the  dew  or  the  ''gentle  rain  from  heaven." 
There  was  nothing  gracious,  nothing  tender,  in  her  fore- 
thought. Love  and  solicitude  for  others  had  no  part  m 
her  success.  It  was  due  wholly  to  her  splendid  business 
faculty  and  determination  to  "  have  things  right." 

To  his  devoted  mother-in-law  the  opening  of  Mr. 
Howe's  congenial  household,  where  economy  was  not 
perforce  the  ruling  spirit  and  one  more  or  less  at  the 
plentiful  table  made  no  difference,  was  a  god-send — a 
haven  of  hope  and  joy  indeed  !  Her  rude  expulsion  as  a 
regular  winter  denizen  from  the  Calvert  mansion  was  now 
made  up  to  her,  and  she  felt  she  was  reaping  at  last  the 
due  reward  of  her  maternal  enterprise  and  tact.  Mr. 
Calvert  had  magnanimously  refrained  from  hinting  to  his 
confiding  friend  what  he  was  probably  in  for,  and  that 
generous  heart  was  quite  large  enough  for  all  and  every- 
thing that  belonged  to  Fanny. 

As  her  betrothed,  and  quite  aside  from  beautiful  and 
costly  lover's  gifts,  he  had  done  very  much  for  her.  Mrs. 
Dexter  had  but  to  mention  something  she  "thought"  of 
getting  for  the  "  precious  child,"  if  happily  the  "  everlast- 
ing no  "  of  Mr.  Dexter's  purse  should  by  chance  permit, 
and  within  a  short  time  it  came  into  her  possession  as  a 
matter  of  course.  In  this  way  Fanny's  music  and  dancing 
lessons  at  school  and  her  cit>  vacation  trips,  also  the 
expenses  of  herself   and  her  mother  on  their  final   visit 


X£W  VGA' A'.-   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  105 

to  New  York  for  trousseau  purposes,  besides  various  seem- 
ing extravagances  of  that  trousseau,  had  all  been  paid  for. 
Now,  however,  that  Fanny's  entire  support  devolved  upon 
him,  and  Mrs.  Dexter  had  but  one  child  left  to  establish, 
it  might  have  been  supposed  that  Mr.  Dexter' s  earnings 
would  suffice  without  those  borrowings  on  the  strength  of 
the  purely  spiritual  remittances  from  Belmont  which  had 
so  disgusted  Mr.  Calvert. 

But  to  Mrs.  Dexter  delicacy  and  gratitude  were  alike 
impossible.  With  her  it  was  *'get  all  you  can,  and  keep 
all  you  get,"  even  from  such  a  ceaseless  benefactor  as 
David  Howe.  She  always  declared  that  lawyers  were  the 
hardest  worked  and  the  worst  paid  servants  of  the  public 
in  the  world,  and  to  hear  her  talk,  one  would  have  sup- 
posed that  the  whole  Dexter  family  had  to  subsist  on  air. 
After  Fanny's  marriage  it  was  for  years  the  fond  dream  of 
her  life  that  Mr.  Dexter  should  get  a  partnership  in  some 
New  York  law  firm  . 

''With  his  talents,"  she  would  declare,  ''my  husband 
would  be  earning  his  thousands  now  in  New  York  if  he 
would  only  have  the  energy  to  make  the  move.  Old 
Judge  Vail  used  to  say  that  *  if  Dexter  only  had  ambition 
he  would  make  his  mark  anywhere.  He  never  met  a  more 
logical  mind  or  heard  a  more  convincing  reasoner. '  " 
But  the  fine  academic  phrases  fathered  on  the  deceased 
judge  by  Mrs.  Dexter' s  imagination,  had  no  more  effect 
on  her  husband  than  had  Mrs.  Gamp's  "Harris"  quota- 
tions on  Betsy  Prig.  He  had  not  an  impulse  of  his  wife's 
infinite  enterprise,  but  was  a  passive,  contented  nature,  a 
slow  sententious  talker,  an  inveterate  tobacco-chewer 
(therefore  probably  always  half-narcotized),  and  though 
steadily  industrious,  never  did  more  than   his  stint.      He 


lo6  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

loved  his  home  and  especially  his  daughters,  dearly,  and 
many  a  man,  goaded  by  the  dislocations  and  discom- 
forts that  his  wife  brought  upon  him  by  her  long  annual 
absences,  would  have  finally  given  in  to  the  views  of  the 
aspiring  one  and  really  tried  his  fortune  as  she  wished. 

But  in  truth  Mr.  Dexter  doubted  his  own  qualifications 
for  city  success.  He  offered  no  opposition  to  his  wife's 
plans  regarding  her  daughters  or  herself.  He  faithfully 
made  over  to  her  everything  he  earned  except  what  suf- 
ficed for  his  own  modest  wants,  and  not  a  hair's  breadth 
farther  could  she  move  him.  During  her  winter  absences, 
when  he  either  lived  dismally  in  the  big  house  with  an  in- 
efficient old  woman  to  cook  for  him,  or  shut  it  up  alto- 
gether, he  found  existence  extremely  detestable;  but  it 
was  easier  to  console  himself  with  private  whiskey-and- 
water,  and  to  seek  sympathy  and  companionship  in  remote 
and  doubtful  farm-houses,  than  to  adventure  the  competi- 
tions of  New  York. 

And  so,  after  the  first  few  years  of  energetic  but  futile 
argument  and  pleading,  the  ill-assorted  couple  zig-zagged 
on,  apart  in  winter,  together  in  summer,  never  breathing 
to  outsiders  a  word  against  each  other,  but  inwardly  aggra- 
vating each  other  all  the  time  to  the  verge  of  endurance. 
Mrs.  Dexter  was  always  in  want  of  money.  Mr.  Dexter, 
as  it  seemed  to  her,  never  had  any.  After  the  exhaustion 
of  poor  Tim's  little  fortune  in  the  beginning  of  her  New 
York  career,  she  had  been  left  to  fight  her  battle  against 
life  in  the  country  practically  alone.  She  carried  on  the 
struggle  by  marvellous  economies  and  meannesses  and  by 
keeping  in  debt  as  deeply  as  she  dared  to  everybody,  but, 
after  the  Calvert  defection,  her  chief  dependence  was  the 
generosity  and  credulity  of  Mr.  Howe. 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  107 

There  is  no  doubt  that,  to  put  it  mildly,  Mr.  Howe 
dearly  loved  to  be  appreciated.  It  was  his  one  weakness, 
and  Mrs.  Dexter  could  play  on  it  to  the  full.  But  let  him 
not  be  undervalued  for  this.  A  spinster  of  over  forty, 
who  from  her  girlhood  had  had  an  unbroken  string  of  ad- 
mirers and  offers  from  men  of  all  descriptions — from  her 
contemporaries,  from  men  much  older  than  herself  and 
men  much  younger  than  herself,  from  professional  men 
and  business  men,  from  men  highly  eligible  and  men  non- 
eligible — this  woman,  who  was  never  either  pretty,  rich  or 
brilliant,  and  who  now  was  not  even  young,  was  at  last 
asked  by  an  intimate  friend  in  some  exasperation:  '*  What 
on  earth  is  the  secret  spell — the  magnetic  charm  ? ' ' 
**  Flattery,"  returned  the  siren,  **and  you  can't  lay  it  on 
too  thick!  " 

Besides  her  unremitting  flattery,  however,  Mrs.  Dexter's 
financial  method  with  Mr.  Howe  showed  a  good  deal  more 
finesse  than  the  simple  borrowings  from  Mr.  Calvert  which 
had  brought  her  to  such  grief.  From  the  day  of  her  au- 
tumn advent  in  New  York  until  she  went  away  in  spring, 
Mrs.  Dexter  deposited  the  whole  of  what  money  she 
brought  with  her  and  also  what  from  time  to  time  she  re- 
ceived, with  Mr.  Howe  as  with  a  banker,  and  then  when 
she  wanted  any,  she  would  ask  him  for  ten,  twenty-five  or 
fifty  dollars  as  the  case  might  be — always  adding,  <*If  I 
overdraw,  David,  be  sure  to  let  me  know,  and  Mr.  Dexter 
will  make  it  good  next  week.  I  keep  no  account  because 
I  know  it's  all  right.  Only,  I  trust  to  you  to  keep  me 
straight !  My  poor  head  isn't  much  where  accounts  are 
concerned-a-h !  ' ' 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE    OLD    STORY. 

The  only  person  in  the  restricted  visiting  Calvert  circle 
who  could  exchange  opinions  on  light  literature  with  Julia 
Calvert,  or  indulge  her  in  those  discussions  of  the  general 
principles  of  romance  that  she  loved,  was  an  obscure,  not 
at  all  elegant,  and  not  very  young  unmarried  lawyer 
named  Whitney.  It  was  enough  to  glance  at  the  coarse 
expression  of  his  coarse  features,  to  discover  what  was  his 
general  moral  and  intellectual  level ;  but  he  did  dabble  in 
books  a  little,  and  as  he  showed  besides  a  high  apprecia- 
tion of  Julia's  mental  powers,  she  in  turn  thought  him 
*^very  cultivated,"  and  his  weekly  or  bi-weekly  call  had 
long  been  to  her  the  grateful  oasis  in  the  monotony  of  the 
petty  commercial  society  to  which  on  leaving  Belmont  she 
had  descended. 

Greatly  as  this  gentleman  admired  Mrs.  Calvert,  he  had 
a  sister  who  equally  admired  Mr.  Calvert.  The  latter  had 
been  a  friend,  almost  an  intimate,  of  Miss  Jenny  Whit- 
ney's, before  he  met  Julia,  and  he  was  aware  that  the  rea- 
son he  always  felt  so  particularly  comfortable  when  he  was 
with  her,  was  because  he  suspected  her  of  a  secret  pen- 
chant for  himself.  He  was  quite  right,  for  his  engagement 
had  been  a  genuine  blow  to  her  ;  but  as  she  was  of  a 
merry  disposition,  she  laughed  it  off  as  best  she  could,  and 
was  as  good  friends  with  Mrs.  Calvert  as  though  the  latter 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  109 

had  not  carried  off  the  man  who  to  her  was  an  embodi- 
ment of  everything  handsome,  elegant  and  clever. 

Miss  Whitney  was  small,  with  coal  black  and  mischiev- 
ous eyes,  a  dark  coarse  skin,  very  red  cheeks,  black  frizzly 
hair,  and  a  very  wide  mouth  with  white,  well-kept  teeth. 
Her  hands  and  feet  were  rather  large,  but  her  figure  was 
trim,  and  she  dressed  in  a  gypsy  style  that  was  highly  be- 
coming. She  was  a  light  and  tireless  dancer,  very  ingeni- 
ous and  endlessly  industrious,  always  with  some  pretty 
fancy-work  in  her  hand,  always  kind,  always  good-natured, 
always  ready  for  anything,  not  literary  in  the  least,  and 
especially  without  a  trace  of  Julia's  exacting  sentiment. 
She  was  anxious  to  be  married,  and  intended  so  to  be  as 
soon  as  some  one  offered  with  what  she  considered  a  com- 
fortable income.  She  had  worshipped  in  vain  at  the 
shrine  of  Beauty,  and  was  now  quite  ready  to  pay  her 
vows  at  the  altar  of  Mammon.  Up  to  a  certain  point  her 
priijciples  were  very  elastic.  She  considered  she  had  a 
right  to  flirt  to  any  extent  as  long  as  she  was  an  unmarried 
woman,  but  she  meant  to  abandon  all  such  follies  for  life 
from  the  moment  she  gave  her  word  to  her  future  husband. 

This  husband  seemed  in  no  hurry  to  appear,  however, 
and  after  a  year  or  two,  her  old  tenderness  yet  lingering  in 
her  breast,  she  got  in  the  way  of  hovering  round  the  Cal- 
verts. 

She  called  constantly  on  Julia  during  the  last  six 
months  of  the  latter' s  boarding  experience,  and  Julia,  in- 
satiably sociable,  and  glad  of  the  companionship  of  any 
one  whom  she  did  not  positively  dislike,  often  asked  her 
to  stay  to  dinner  and  spend  the  evening.  Mr.  Whitney 
generally  called  round  for  his  sister,  and  Julia  was  always 
charmed  to  see  him.     With  her  delicate  beauty,  her  lovely 


no  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

toilets,  and  her  distant  though  winning  sweetness,  she  es- 
tablished a  sort  of  little  empire  over  him,  and  he  secretly 
thought  that  she  had  fallen  to  a  most  unappreciative  hus- 
band. So  those  two  would  sit  and  talk  books  together, 
while  Miss  Whitney  and  Mr.  Calvert  talked  gossip  or  the 
fashions.  Sometimes  Mr.  Whitney  could  not  come  for 
his  sister,  when  Mr.  Calvert  would  have  to  go  home  with 
her,  and  then  they  generally  talked  about  ' '  old  times. ' ' 

When  the  Calverts  went  to  housekeeping  in  Brooklyn, 
Miss  Whitney,  or  "Jenny"  as  they  familiarly  called  her, 
used  to  come  over  to  pass  the  night  or  even  to  spend  sev- 
eral days,  and  this  domestic  intimacy  made  her  sometimes 
a  witness  to  the  frequent  jars  between  the  married  pair 
which  one  was  quite  as  reckless  of  provoking  as  the  other. 
As  for  example  the  following — Julia  beginning : 

"Frank,  did  you  get  the  tickets  for  Mr.  Everett's  ad- 
dress on  Washington  in  New  York  to-night?" 

"No,  Juley." 

"Why,  Frank!  That  is  too  bad!  You  know  how  I 
have  been  counting  on  it,  and,  Jenny,"  turning  to  her, 
"  you  heard  me  tell  him  the  very  last  thing  this  morning 
before  he  went  to  the  city  ?  ' ' 

"I  didn't  forget  it." 

"  ^Didn't?'  "  echoed  Julia,  with  asperity:  "then,  pray, 
why  didn't  you  get  them  ?  " 

"I  didn't  see  how  you  were  to  get  there.  Whitney 
couldn't  be  your  escort  because  he  had  another  engage- 
ment, and  tired  as  I  am  every  night  at  this  season,  I 
couldn't  be  bored  to  go  and  hear  a  man  talk  two  hours 
about  an  old  chap  who  has  been  talked  to  death  anyhow. 
I  don' t  see  how  people  stand  it. ' ' 

'*I  dare  say  not.     There  are  a  good  many  things  in 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  Ill 

heaven  and  earth  that  are  not  dreamed  of  in  your  philos- 
ophy," tossing  her  head  ;  "■  but  because  you  cannot  enjoy 
a  thing  you  needn't  take  it  for  granted,  ever,  that  /can't ! 
I  wouldn't  have  missed  that  lecture  for  anything.  Everett 
is  one  of  the  great  orators  of  the  country,  and  everybody 
goes  to  hear  him.     But  it's  just  like  you  !  " 

''Well,  /think,  Mrs.  Calvert,  that  it's  just  XxV^  you. 
Twice  last  week  I  wanted  to  go  to  the  theatre,  and  you 
wouldn't  budge." 

''I'm  sick  of  the  theatre,  and  you  never  want  to  go 
anywhere  else." 

"Because  the  theatre  rests  me.  It  takes  my  mind  off 
my  business  and  makes  me  laugh ;  so  it  pays  to  go.  But 
these  solemn  subjects  are  like  doing  a  double  day's  work. 
Now  you  sit  all  day  and  read  novels ' ' 

"Leaving  my  house  to  take  care  of  itself,  I  suppose," 
interrupted  Julia,  angrily. 

" — and  it's  no  wonder  you  want  something  serious  at 
night.  I  should  think  you  would ;  and  I  would  make  the 
effort  to  go  with  you  as  I  often  have  before,  if  you  in  turn 
would  take  any  pleasure  in  going  to  what  pleases  me. 
But,  by  Jove  !  I'm  about  tired  of  making  all  the  sacri- 
fices." 

' '  Did  you  ever  make  sacrifices  for  me,  dear  ?  ' '  drawled 
Julia,  sarcastically.  "If  you  did,  it's  so  long  ago  that 
you  must  excuse  me  for  havmg  forgotten  it.  Stay — I  do 
remember  now  that  when  you  began  paying  me  attention 
you  took  me  to  hear  a  set  of  Agassiz's  lectures  on  Natural 
History.     Very  considerate,  I'm  sure  !  " 

"Oh — ^Agassiz?"  questioned  Miss  Whitney,  seizing  the 
opportunity  to  make  a  diversion:  "He  is  that  French- 
man, or  German — isn't  he,    the  papers  talked  so  much 


11.2  A'EIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

about?  Jim  (her  brother)  took  me  to  one  of  that  same 
set,  I  guess,  and  he  spoke  such  broken  English  that  I  could 
hardly  understand  a  word." 

''  Couldn't  you?  "  cried  Julia,  with  enthusiasm  ;  **  why, 
I  understood  him  perfectly,  and  he  was/^r-fectly  fascinat- 
ing. I  never  enjoyed  anything  more  in  my  life.  The 
way  he  drew  those  illustrations  on  the  black  board — de- 
lightful !  You  understood  him,  didn't  you,  Frank  ?  I  re- 
member you  seemed  to  enjoy  it." 

'*0h,  yes!  I  like  Natural  History.  That's  practical, 
and  anything  practical  suits  me.  But  I  don't  think  Agas- 
siz  is  a  Frenchman.  He's  a  German,  isn't  he  ?  Anyway, 
he  looks  like  one — reg'lar  Dutchman  !  " 

' '  No,  no.  He  is  a  Swiss.  The  Swiss  speak  French.  The 
famous  Rousseau  was  a  Swiss  and  he  wrote  in  French," 
returned  Julia,  happy  in  delivering  a  little  piece  of 
recondite  knowledge  that  she  was  sure  the  others  didn't 
possess. 

''How  she  always  does  know  everything,  doesn't  she, 
Mr.  Calvert !  "  exclaimed  Miss  Whitney,  admiringly. 

"Of  course!  We're  nowhere  when  she's  round — eh, 
Juley?  "  said  Mr.  Calvert  good-naturedly,  and  the  tiff  ex- 
ternally was  over,  but  remained  tingling  down  in  the  bot- 
tom of  their  hearts  for  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

Miss  Jenny  had  a  very  adroit  way  of  turning  off  these 
pleasing  conjugal  controversies  at  the  first  possible  mo- 
ment, but  inwardly  her  heart  melted  with  tenderness  over 
the  generous,  hot-headed  fellow  of  whom  his  cool  little 
wife  thought  so  little.  She  thought  how  differently  she 
would  have  treated  him,  and  secretly  she  always  sided 
with  him.  He  had  an  instinct  that  she  did,  and  it  made 
him  more  rough  and  hardy  in  having  his  own  way.     It 


iV£ll^  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  113 

made  him  dangerously  grateful  to  her,  too.  A  very  clever 
woman,  on  reading  Mrs.  Tilton's  first  "statement"  in  the 
famous  Beecher-Tilton  controversy,  quoted  from  it  the 
sentence — ''When  I  was  with  Mr.  Beecher,  I  seemed  to 
myself  to  be  somebody,'"  and  said — ''That  tells  the  whole 
story  !  No  doubt  Tilton  was  an  obtuse,  selfish  egotist 
who  always  depreciated  his  wife  and  exalted  himself,  while 
Mr.  Beecher  appreciated  her  " 

Similarly  was  it  with  Frank  Calvert.  His  self-respect, 
continually  w^ounded  and  bleeding  from  his  wife's  sarcasms 
and  tacit  assumption  of  superiority,  was  healed  and  re- 
stored by  Miss  Jenny's  silent  sympathy  and  approval,  and 
the  more  he  saw  of  her,  the  more  he  asked  himself  why  he 
had  been  such  a  fool  as  to  take  a  girl  who  had  been  six 
months  making  up  her  mind  whether  she  wanted  him,  in- 
stead of  one  whom  he  was  sure  would  have  accepted  him 
with  ecstasy  on  the  first  asking. 

Frank  was  fond  of  back-gammon  and  often  begged  for 
a  rubber  in  the  evening.  Julia  hated  the  game,  and  gen- 
erally played  under  protest ;  but  Miss  Whitney  adored  it, 
as  she  did  all  games  of  chance,  and  was  always  glad  to  be 
his  partner.  So  she  and  Mr.  Calvert  gradually  fell  into 
a  cosy  habit  of  playing  together  after  dinner.  If  the 
dice  were  against  the  latter,  however,  he  would  not  be 
content  with  a  rubber  merely,  but  always  insisted  on  play- 
ing until  he  won.  Julia  was  generally  content  to  be  left 
to  her  Eve?ung  Post  or  her  novel,  but  sometimes  she 
wanted  to  talk,  and  then,  if  they  would  not  leave  off,  she 
would  exclaim  at  their  unsociableness,  and  perhaps  betake 
herself  in  pretended  dudgeon  to  bed. 

Above  flirting  with  anyone  herself,  and  incapable  even 
of  conceiving  it  with  another  woman's  husband,  it  never 


114  ^ElV  YORK::  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

entered  the  young  wife's  mind  to  fear  that  she  was  perhaps 
tempting  her  liege  by  having  ^his  easy,  merry,  flattering 
young  woman  so  much  about  them.  Jenny  was  older 
than  she,  not  half  so  pretty,  and  in  fact  rather  ^'common." 
Confident  of  her  own  superior  attractions  she  never  even 
thought  of  her  as  a  rival. 

One  evening,  however,  it  happened  that  when  Julia 
was  supposed  safe  in  her  own  room,  she  had  in  reality 
gone  down  into  the  kitchen  to  solace  herself  with  a  cup 
of  hot  cocoa  before  going  to  bed.  She  got  talking  with 
the  cook,  and  it  was  some  little  time  before  she  came  up 
again.  Her  tread  was  light,  and  as  in  ascending  she 
heard  neither  dice  nor  voices  in  the  front  drawing  room 
where  they  had  been  sitting,  she  concluded  that  Miss 
Jenny  had  retired,  but  as  the  gas  was  burning,  that 
Frank  was  probably  still  in  there  finishing  his  cigar  over 
the  register.  The  back  drawing  room  was  unlighted,  but 
its  door,  which  was  near  the  head  of  the  kitchen  stairs, 
was  open,  and  she  was  walking  in  to  have  a  little  conjugal 
chat,  when  her  step  was  arrested  by  a  sight  which  froze 
her  blood — for  Frank  Calvert  and  Jenny — thoughtless, 
reckless  beings — were  standing  in  the  front  room  in  a 
good-night  embrace  ! 

They  had  neither  seen  nor  heard  her,  and  she  regained 
her  room.  Her  mirror  reflected  a  face  like  death,  but  she 
crept  to  bed  and  pretended  to  be  asleep,  so  that  her  hus- 
band should  off"er  her  no  good-night  kiss !  The  next 
morning  she  pleaded  a  headache,  and  remaining  in  bed 
she  asked  Miss  Whitney  to  do  some  morning  errands  for 
her.  Jenny  was  all  sympathy  and  eagerness  to  oblige,  but 
the  moment  she  was  out  of  the  house,  Julia  flew  to  her 
room  and  ransacked  her  drawers  and  the  pockets  of  her 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  115 

dresses.     She  was  rewarded  by  finding  the  following  in 
Calvert's  handwriting; — 

My  sweetest  Friend, 

When  are  you  coming  over  to  old  "  341"  again  ?  If  you  knew  how 
the  evenings  drag  with  no  one  but  a  cold,  unsympathetic  companion  to 
talk  to !  When  you  are  there,  yoiu-  dear  bright  eyes  give  me  new  life. 
I  tried  my  very  best  to  call  the  other  day  when  you  said  you  should  be 
"all  alone"  (sweet  word!)  but  alas!  I  could  not  possibly  get  away 
from  the  store.  Were  you  mad  with  your  Herbert  that  you  have  not  let 
him  see  you  since?  Don't  you  know  that  I  would  have  come  if  I 
could  ?  Don't  I  think  of  you  every  minute  that  I  have  time  to  think  at 
all  ?  O,  when  I  realize  the  happiness  I  might  have  had,  it  drives  me 
wild !  Only  those  kind  eyes  and  those  sweet  unwilling  (  ?)  kisses  con- 
sole me  for  a  few  brief  moments  for  its  dreadful  loss.  Do  let  me  have 
them  soon  again,  or  I  shall  fear  you  do  not  care  much  for  your  own 
devoted,  miserable — 

H. 

The  earth  opened  beneath  Julia's  feet.  She  seemed  to 
herself  to  have  fallen  into  an  abyss  of  infamy  and  woe. 
She  had  but  three  thoughts — to  get  the  treacherous  girl 
out  of  the  house — to  see  her  father,  and  to  leave  Calvert 
forever.  She  sent  a  telegram  to  her  father — "  Come  to 
me  quick  and  don't  tell  anybody  but  mother,"  and  wrote 
a  line  to  Miss  Whitney  which  she  ordered  the  servant  to 
give  her  when  she  came  in — and  then  she  locked  herself 
in  her  room. 

This  was  the  note  to  Miss  Whitney : 

I  saw  you  last  night  when  you  little  suspected  it.  I  have  just 
found  in  one  of  your  pockets  a  love-letter  from  Mr.  Calvert  to  you,  I 
have  sent  for  my  father,  also  for  an  exprpssman  to  take  your  trunk  to 
New  York.  I  trusted  you,  and  you  have  ruined  me !  You  have  taken 
from  me  all  that  I  had — my  husband's  love.  Base,  wicked,  detestable 
girl !     May  you  Que  day  be  served  as  you  have  served  me  ! 

Julia  Dexter  Calvert. 


Ii6  NE IV  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"  When  he  sent  my  mother  o^  last  year,  he  did  not  count 
upon  my  sending  off  some  df  y  his  <' sweetest  friend" — 
said  Julia  to  herself,  revengefully. 

Miss  Whitney,  ashamed  and  conscience-stricken,  packed 
her  trunk  with  a  face  as  ghastly  as  Julia's  own,  and  left  the 
house.  Her  enemy  put  to  flight,  and  nothing  more  to  be 
done  until  her  father  appeared,  Julia's  nerves  gave  way, 
and  she  spent  the  afternoon  in  her  room  in  dreadful  weep- 
ing. She  thought  her  misery  was  unique — that  it  exceed- 
ed all  that  woman  had  ever  suffered  from  the  hands  of 
man.  ' '  A  man  that  for  six  months  begged  and  implored 
me  to  marry  him — who  would  be  utterly  '  ruined  '  if  I  re- 
fused him — who  had  *  never  loved  or  dreamed  of  any 
woman  '  but  me  !  ' ' 

When  Calvert  came  home  he  was  frightened  at  the  state 
in  which  he  found  his  wife.  She  had  not  combed  her  hair 
nor  dressed  herself  all  day ;  her  eyes  were  so  swollen  with 
weeping  that  she  was  unrecognizable,  and  she  would  not 
tell  him  what  was  the  matter.  ''My  Julia — my  dearest 
girl — my  wife  !  What  is  the  matter  ?  .  What  has  hap- 
pened?    Have  you  had  bad  news?     Where's  Jenny?" 

' '  Nothing  is  the  matter — at  least,  nothing  that  you  can 
do  anything  about.  Father  will  be  here  to-morrow  morn- 
ing and  I  will  tell  him.  I  don't  know  where  Jenny  is. 
Please  go  down  stairs  and  leave  me  to  myself." 

He  brought  her  up  some  dinner  and  tried  to  make  her 
eat — some  tea,  and  coaxed  her  to  drink,  and  all  in  vain. 
He  persisted  in  staying  with  her  and  trying  to  pet  and 
comfort  her  until  she  said — ''Frank,  you  will  drive  me 
mad  if  you  stay  in  this  room.  I  tell  you  I  don't  want  to 
see  you,  and  I  won't  until  father  comes.  Do  you  want  me 
to  begin  to  shriek  and  scream  ?  ' ' 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  -i-^i^l 

She  looked  so  wild  that  he  was  verily  afraid  she  would, 
so  he  left  her  and  went  out  for  a  doctor  and  then  went 
over  to  New  York  to  seek  an  explanation  from  Miss 
Whitney. 

The  parlor  was  empty,  which  he  thought  fortunate,  and 
he  sent  up  his  card;  but  the  young  lady  did  not  come 
down.  It  is  the  peculiarity  of  entanglements  with  married 
people — whether  it  be  only  that  adultery  of  the  heart 
called  flirtation,  such  as  Calvert  and  Miss  Whitney  had 
been  indulging  in,  or  the  unpardonable  sin  itself — that 
even  ih  the  eyes  of  the  participants  they  are  generally 
only  romantic  and  sacred  and  refined  while  they  are  unsus- 
pected. When  they  are  found  out  they  often  become  as 
revolting  to  the  lovers  themselves  as  they  are  to  the  rest 
of  the  world,  and  remorse  and  shame  drive  out  the  unlaw- 
ful passion  from  their  hearts  like  revengeful  furies. 

In  the  trial  a  few  years  ago  of  two  terrible  criminafs — 
guilty  lovers  who  were  accused  of  murdering  their  married 
partners  in  order  that  they  might  marry  each  other — it 
was  wonderful  how  eagerly  the  man  in  his  sworn  statement 
tried  to  make  out  the  woman  as  a  murderess  cool  and 
atrocious  beyond  belief.  Evidently  no  least  spark  of 
regard  for  her  remained.  He  was  only  anxious  to  make 
himself  appear  white  in  comparison  with  her  inky  black- 
ness. 

And  so  in  the  great  clerical  scandal  of  the  century, 
many  will  remember  how  willing  was  the  gifted  defendant 
to  insinuate  that  the  poor  little  woman  who  was  the  sole 
victim  of  it  all,  was  weak-minded,  infatuated,  a  liar,  a 
monomaniac — anything,  so  that  he  could  clear  himself. 
Yet,  during  the  years  when  his  lawless  love-making  to 
this  very  woman,  the  wife  of  his  friend,  was  going  on,  he 


Ii8  NEW  YORKt  a   symphonic  STUDY. 

was  accustomed  to  speak  of  her  as  the  peculiar  embodi- 
ment of  all  that  was  divinely^feminine  and  tender  ! 

Something  similar  to  these  was  Jenny  Whitney's  revul- 
sion of  feeling,  only  that,  girl-like,  to  herself  she  alone 
seemed  the  criminal.  Her  flirtation  with  a  married  man 
being  discovered,  she  saw  -immediately  how  inexcusable 
it  had  been.  Now  she  felt  for  herself  only  loathing  and 
disgust,  and  for  him  utter  coldness.  She  would  not  come 
down,  but  she  sent  him  a  farewell  note  that  she  had  spent 
the  afternoon,  amid  bitter  tears,  in  writing. 

• 
Julia  has  discovered  everything,  and  we  must  part.  She  wrote 
to  me — "/  trusted  you  and  you  have  ruined  me^  O  how  she  must 
despise  me  ! — but  not  so  much  as  I  despise  myself.  I  have  been 
infatuated!  I  don't  know  what  I  have  been  thinking  of!  I  never 
thought  flirting  much  harm,  but  I  see  now  that  with  a  mavj-ied  man  it 
is  a  CRIME !  I  trust  this  will  not  break  up  your  friendship  with  my 
brother — that  he  will  hear  nothing  of  it.  I  know  how  much  he  thinks 
of  you  both.  I  am  going  immediately  to  Cincinnati  to  visit  my  sister, 
and  I  hope  you  both  will  forget  that  you  have  ever  known  such  a 
reckless,  thoughtless  girl,  as 

Jenny. 
P.  S.     Please  show  this  to  Julia. 

This  note  made  Calvert  furious  with  Jenny,  furious 
with  Julia,   furious  with  himself. 

''Show  it  to  Julia?" — not  he!  and  he  tore  it  in  a 
thousand  pieces.  He  felt  as  if  he  hated  the  girl  who  told 
him  that  to  receive  his  tenderness  had  been  a  ''crime." 
There  was  nothing  criminal  about  it.  He  would  not  have 
led  her  into  anything  seriously  wrong  for  the  world.  Of 
one  thing  he  was  very  certain.  He  would  never  love  his 
wife  again,  and  if  she  undertook  to  take  the  high  hand,  so 
would  he.  He  returned  home  and  slept  in  the  guest- 
room and  went  off  to  the  city  the  next  morning  without 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  119 

seeing  or  enquiring  for  Julia.  Her  father  appeared  after 
breakfast,  and  to  him  she  poured  out  her  woes. 

^'  Father,  he  no  longer  loves  me.  You  see  it  from  this 
letter.  I  cannot  live  with  him.  It's  impossible.  It 
would  kill  me." 

*'  Tell  me  what  you  propose  to  do." 

*'  Take  Clara  and  leave  him,  of  course  !  He  said  once 
before  that  he  would  give  me  two-thirds  of  his  income  and 
that  I  could  live  where  I  liked.  I  did  not  choose  to  take 
the  offer  then,  but  now  I  will." 

^'  How  do  you  know  he  will  make  the  offer  again?  " 

**  He  must !  He  shall  !  After  such  an  injury  as  this  he 
dare  not  refuse  it." 

"  Frank  Calvert  is  a  very  high-spirited  man,  my  dear 
child,  and  a  very  obstinate  one,  as  you  have  reason  to 
know.  The  law  will  give  you  nothing  on  the  basis  of  this 
flirtation  with  Jenny  Whitney,  for  you  have  no  evidence 
that  it  is  anything  more,  and  you  do  not  believe,  yourself, 
that  it  is  anything  more.  Still  less  will  it  give  you  Clara. 
If  you  leave  Frank,  the  law  will  look  upon  him  as  a  de- 
serted hu-sband,  and  you  will  l)e  entitled  to  neither  child 
nor  income  unless  he  chooses  to  give  them  to  you.  Of 
course  you  can  come  home  to  Belmont,  if  you  like,  but 
with  your  mother  half  the  time  in  New  York,  Fanny  mar- 
ried, and  Josephine  at  school,  and  pinched  to  death  for 
means  all  the  time  as  we  are,  you  can  judge  what  that 
would  be  compared  with  your  present  position  and  com- 
forts. 

''I  wish  I  was  dead!"  sobbed  Julia.  ''The  only 
thing  there  is  for  me  to  do  is  to  die,  and  then  he  could 
marry  that  vile,  deceitful  girl." 

**  The  only  thing  for  you  to  do  is  to  live  and  be  a  gay, 


120  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

happy  little  wife,  and  you  will  easily  win  him  back  again," 
returned  her  father.  v 

' '  To  have  to  be  dependent — to  have  to  be  the  wife  of 
a  man  that  doesn't  love  me  !  0-h — what  humiliation  ! — 
what  degradation  !  ' ' 

*' Julia,  my  dear,  you  know  very  little  of  the  world.  If 
you  did,  you  would  know  that  these  things  are  happening 
every  day  in  the  lives  of  many — I  may  say,  of  the  majority 
of  married  people,  and  every  day  they  are  forgiven  and 
forgotten.  You  know  lawyers  hear  everything,  and  if  I 
should  tell  you  half  I  know  about  the  married  men  even  of 
our  quiet  little  Belmont,  you  would  think  we  were  all  go- 
ing to  the  devil.  (Perhaps  they  were — more  literally  than 
Mr.  Dexter  meant !)  These  little  affairs  arise  from  the 
most  transient  impulses — are  the  expression  of  the  most 
fickle  surface  emotion.  They  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
deep,  sacred  feeling  a  man  has  for  his  wife  !  Frank  is  all 
right  at  bottom.  He's  all  sound  at  the  core.  I  know  he 
is,  and  when  he  realizes  how  unhappy  he  has  made  you, 
he  will  probably  never  think  of  having  such  a  sentimental 
friendship  again  as  long  as  he  lives.  I'm  almost  vexed 
with  you  for  being  so  unreasonable." 

''  *  Unreasonable  '  ?  Why,  father,  I  never  made  the  thou- 
sandth part  of  the  professions  to  Frank  Calvert  that  he 
has  to  me — I  might  say,  a  thousand  times — and  yet  I 
would  no  more  flirt  with  another  man  than  I  would  cut 
my  head  oif." 

'^  Well,  well,  my  dear,  men  are  not  like  women  in  these 
matters — ' ' 

"  I  shouldn't  think  they  were  !  "  indignantly  interrupted 
the  weeping  Julia. 

"■ — and  they've  got  to   be  judged  by  quite  different 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  121 

standards.  They're  easily  led  away,  you  know — easily 
flattered.  No  doubt  this  Miss  Whitney  flattered  Calvert 
and  made  herself  agreeable  to  him,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing,  and  for  the  moment  he  was  affected  by  it.  But 
you'll  find  it  was  only  for  the  moment — only  for  the 
moment ! ' ' 

Mr.  Dexter  was  a  very  loving  father  and  a  crafty  old 
Jawyer-fox  as  well,  and  after  spending  the  day  with  his 
tragic  little  daughter  spinning  sophistries  and  lies  like  the 
above,  and  like  the  Evening  Post  in  the  1884  campaign, 
dragging  down  all  other  men  in  order  to  make  the  repro- 
bate in  question  excusable,  he  got  her  by  degrees  into  a 
more  reasonable  frame  of  mind. 

She  still  kept  her  room,  however,  and  Mr.  Dexter  and 
Calvert  dined  together  alone.  The  father-in-law  talked 
pleasantly  on  indifferent  subjects  until  the  coffee  was 
brought  in  and  Frank  offered  him  a  cigar,  when,  after 
puffing  awhile  in  silence  he  at  last  broke  the  ice. 

**  This  is  an  unpleasant  business,  my  dear  boy.  Julia  is 
heart-broken  because  she  doesn't  believe  you  love  her. 
She  thinks  you  want  to  get  rid  of  her  and  sent  for  me  to 
arrange  the  matter  in  case  you  do.  She  is  willing  to  go  if 
you  wish,  but  I  fear  the  separation  would  kill  her.  She's 
not  demonstrative,  I  know.  I  tell  her  that  it  is  her  fault, 
and  a  serious  one.  But  her  feelings  are  very  deep,  very 
loyal,  and  she  has  never  even  looked  at  a  man  but  you." 

Thus  the  skillful  diplomat.  Frank  had  not  expected 
this  tone.  He  had  braced  himself  up  for  something  quite 
different,  and  he  melted  at  once  at  the  thought  of  Julia's 
love  and  distress. 

"  Send  her  away?  "  he  cried.  **  Send  my  Julia  away? 
— ^why,  the  child  is  crazy  !     I  never  had  such  a  thought. 


122  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

I  confess  I've  been  having  a  rather  foolish  flirtation, 
which,  it  seems,  she  has  f&und  out ;  but  by  the  Lord 
that  made  me,  the  girl  is  nothing  to  me  nor  I  to  her. 
Julia  had  her  here  so  much  for  company,  and  she  has  such 
a  easy,  familiar,  pleasant  sort  of  manner,  that  I  got  a  little 
silly  over  her  before  I  knew  it.  But  I  declare" — sponta- 
neous lies  coming  faster  and  faster,  ''I'm  deuced  glad 
Julia  has  found  it  out,  for  to  tell  the  truth  it  troubled  me, 
aad  yet  I  didn't  know  how  to  get  out  of  it." 

He  rushed  up  the  stairs  two  at  a  time,  and  burst  into 
her  room. 

''Julia!  My  darling!  My  pet !  My  treasure  !  You  are 
not  willing  to  go  away  from  your  Frank,  even  if  he  wants 
you  to,  are  you  ?  What !  let  my  wife  and  child  leave  me  ! 
Impossible  !  I  have  been  wrong,  but  I  have  suffered  all 
the  time  (!)  for  I  knew  I  was  doing  wrong.  There  is 
only  misery  in  such  outside  feelings.  O,  Julia !  be  my 
own  sweet,  loving,  little  wife  once  more,  and  I  will  never 
look  at  another  woman  again  !  ' ' 

She  had  really  suffered  so  intensely,  and  upon  reflection 
was  so  appalled  at  her  own  proposition  of  going  out  into 
the  world,  that  she  was  glad  enough  to  shrink  back,  cow- 
ard-like and  woman-like,  into  her  nest.  The  human  heart 
is  a  complicated,  and  in  marriage  a  perfectly  inscrutable 
thing.  Where  truth  ends  and  falsehood  begins  with  this 
double  being  called  "  man  and  wife  "  is  almost  impossible 
to  tell.  The  pair  were  outwardly  reconciled,  and  for  a 
season  were  warmer  and  more  tender  to  each  other  than 
they  had  been  for  a  long  time  before. 

But  why  is  the  human  heart  so  constituted  that  its  other 
ties  and  affections  are  like  gold — still  precious  even  if 
bruised   and   battered,   while   marriage,   which   from   the 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  123 

inherent  difficulties  of  the  situation,  ought  to  have  been 
framed  to  withstand  the  hardest  shocks,  is  like  faience — 
the  least  crack  takes  away  all  its  value.  Does  any  loyal 
husband  forget  a  flirtation  against  himself  that  he  has  once 
looked  squarely  in  the  face  and  acknowledged  as  such? 
Does  any  wife?  Certainly  Julia  could  not.  Her  confi- 
dence in  life  was  gone.  The  ''  little  rift  "  had  come  into 
her  lute,  and  with  it  the  music  and  the  charm  had  vanished 
forever  away.  Nay,  much  more.  She  had  been  so  sure 
of  the  solid  rock  on  which  her  earthly  house  was  built,  that 
the  gusts  of  temper  and  misunderstanding  that  blew  over 
it  had  had  but  little  significance  for  her.  Now,  though 
by  but  a  hair's  breadth,  that  rock  was  split  down  to  its 
very  foundations.  No  matter  what  Calvert  did  she  would 
be  faithful  in  word  and  deed.  She  would  be  true  to 
herself,  ever,  but  it  was  no  longer  a  marriage  to  her. 
They  were  not  one  any  more,  but  two,  and  the  fascinating 
but  proud  woman  secretly  wrapped  herself  up  in  her 
isolation,  and  fancied  that  her  husband  would  not  perceive 
it  because  her  manner  to  him  was  what  it  had  always 
been  since  the  first  cross  word  he  ever  spoke  to  her — 
neither  more  nor  less. 

As  for  Calvert,  his  confidence  in  himself  was  gone. 
His  marriage  had  shown  him  what  he  did  not — Jenny 
Whitney  had  shown  him  what  he  did — want  in  woman. 
He  was  not  a  Christian,  and  in  the  absence  of  a  public 
opinion  demanding  it,  Christianity  is  the  only  force  that 
can  constrain  a  husband  to  be  true  to  a  wife  who  has 
ceased  to  be  first  in  his  heart.  The  Christian  command 
is  there,  and  the  Christian  accepts  and  obeys  it  because 
there  it  is,  even  if  he  walk  over  burning  ploughshares  to 
do  it. 


124  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

But  to  the  **  natural  "  unconverted  man — to  the  man  of 
the  world,  even  to  the  most  honorable,  this  is  nonsense  as 
much  as  though  he  should  be  required  to  starve  when  he 
saw  food  before  him.  Such  a  man  will  indeed  consult  his 
wife's  happiness,  because  that  he  promised  to  himself  to 
do  when  he  asked  her  to  be  his  wife.  But  he  will  also 
take  happiness  for  himself  where,  in  his  opinion,  it  does 
not  injure  her.  The  stolen  waters  had  been  so  sweet  to 
the  warm-hearted,  impulsive  Calvert,  that  he  knew  within 
himself,  should  they  again  well  at  his  feet  he  would  again 
stoop  to  drink  of  them.  But  not  twice  would  he  be  so 
thoughtless  as  to  run  any  risk  of  his  wife  finding  it  out. 
Julia  should  never  again  have  cause  for  uneasiness — that 
much  her  storm  of  grief  and  distress  made  him  swear 
to  himself.  Moreover,  he  would  not — he  thought  he 
would  not — seek  a  flirtation  !    And  here  his  resolves  ended. 

As  for  Miss  Whitney — in  Cincinnati  she  met  a  staid 
and  moneyed  widower  of  thirty-five,  who  very  soon 
became  absorbingly  anxious  that  the  sprightly  New  Yorker 
should  "  make  a  home  "  for  himself,  and  *'  be  a  mother  " 
to  his  children. 

The  good-hearted  girl  accepted  the  trust  in  the  spirit  in 
which  it  was  offered,  and  a  few  years  from  the  season 
which  had  shattered  the  idol  of  her  youth,  saw  her 
settled  down  into  one  of  those  cheerful,  faithful,  self- 
forgetting  matrons  who  bestow  upon  the  world  so  large  a 
share  of  its  comfort  and  of  its  negative  happiness. 

The  ready-made  family  proved  grateful  and  devoted, 
existence  flowed  tranquilly  and  prosperously  on,  and  in 
after  life,  early  friends  spoke  of  '*  Jenny  Whitney"  as  a 
*< success!  " 


I 


CHAPTER  XV. 

A   DOMESTIC    DESPOT. 

Unlike  her  less  energetic  elder  sister,  Mrs.  David  Howe 
had  no  objection  to  motherhood.  In  fact,  she  had  a  person- 
al motive  for  accepting  it.  Her  lungs  were  delicate  and  her 
physician  had  assured  her  that  nursing  was  the  best  thing 
for  her  health.  So  she  said,  philosophically  :  '*  Somebody 
has  got  to  have  the  children,  and  I  suppose  it  might  as 
well  be  me,"  and  serenely  presented  her  husband  with  a 
baby  every  year  or  two — a  boy  and  a  girl  alternating  with 
each  other  with  great  propriety.  Nurses  and  seamstresses 
were  plenty,  and  after  the  little  ones  came  their  first  three 
or  four  years  were  as  lavishly  wrapped  in  white  dresses  and 
embroideries  as  any  Fifth  Avenue  toddler  of  them  all ! 

Mrs.  Howe's  house-atmosphere  was  very  gay.  Like  her 
mother,  she  knew  how  to  make  it  easy  for  people,  particu- 
larly if  they  were  of  the  nobler  sex. 

"  I  won't  have  my  husband  going  off  to  clubs  and  bars 
and  billiard  rooms,"  she  would  say,  with  a  great  air  of 
wifely  virtue  and  sweetness,  ' '  and  deserting  his  family 
when  he  wants  to  see  his  friends.  I  tell  him  he  must 
bring  them  home  !  " — and  she  made  him  set  up  a  billiard- 
table  and  herself  learned  the  game  and  practised  it  many 
an  evening  and  Sunday  afternoon  with  Mr.  Howe  and  his 
visitors.  In  this  way  she  secured  not  only  her  husband's 
society,  which  she  could,  but  also  that  of  his  men  acquaint- 


126  NEM^  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ance,  which  she  could  not,  have  dispensed  with — dress, 
distraction  and  male  companionship  ad  libitum  being  her 
ideal  of  existence,  as  indeed  it  always  has  been  with  all  the 
Venus-women  who  ever  lived.  And  were  there  no  other 
life  than  this,  such  would  in  fact  be  the  only  sensible  ideal 
for  any  woman. — Why  not,  *'  if  to-morrow  we  die?  " 

David  Howe,  the  excellent  and  prospering  man  whom 
Mrs.  Dexter  had  so  successfully  secured  for  her  second 
daughter,  had  a  face  which,  in  spite  of  the  keen  business 
stamp  upon  it,  expressed  all  the  gifts  and  virtues — the 
intelligence,  will,  integrity  and  purity — the  generosity, 
cheerfulness  and  refinement  that  its  owner  quite  exception- 
ally possessed.  He  was  purely  American,  the  product  of 
those  free  Protestant-Christian  forces  which  have  given  to 
this  country  its  steady  procession  of  self-governed,  single- 
hearted,  romantic  and  devoted  men,  who,  in  spite  of  the 
perpetual  deflections  of  the  foreign  masses  on  either  side  of 
them,  and  quite  unconscious  of  the  depth  and  strength  and 
poetry  of  their  own  natures,  have  carried  it  onward  and  up- 
ward to  its  present  glory  and  power.  He  and  his  brothers 
had  been  orphaned  in  their  teens,  and  had  made  their  way 
through  the  world  simply  by  their  native  aptness,  industry 
and  high  character.  They  had  several  sisters,  one  of 
whom  David  Howe  had  always  supported,  and  from  the 
first  she  was  an  inmate  of  his  married  home. 

Mr.  Howe  had  received  only  an  elementary  education, 
and,  like  most  men  who  have  had  only  that,  was  un- 
conscious of  the  want  of  a  more  liberal  one,  as  the 
demands  and  strain  of  business  left  him  no  time  to 
discover  mental  deficiencies.  He  possessed,  therefore,  not 
a  virile,  instructed  mind,  but  a  boyish,  intelligent  one. 
He  could  string  off  rhymes  and  descriptions,  was  a  good 


JV£^V  YORK;   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  127 

story-teller  and  a  ready  punster,  and  possessed  an  unusual 
eye  for  a  good  picture.  But  he  was  not  deep.  In  religion 
he  was  a  Universalist  and  in  politics  he  was  of  course  a 
Republican. 

Morality  and  respectability  were  not  David  Howe's 
acquired,  but  his  original  nature.  He  was  ''  born  good," 
and  the  departures  from  truth,  sincerity  and  delicacy  of 
which  his  wife  and  Mrs.  Dexter  were  capable,  never 
occurred  to  him  as  even  within  the  bounds  of  possibility. 
He  judged  the  sex  by  his  own  self-abnegating  mother 
and  sisters,  and  enshrined  those  nearest  to  him  as  simply 
above  suspicion.  That  stronger>  man  was  to  work  for 
weaker  and  lovelier  woman,  give  her  everything  she 
wanted  and  exact  nothing  back,  was  the  matter-of-course 
chivalry  of  his  life.  As  much  as  any  man  he  would  have 
loved  to  be  loved,  but  he  did  not  know  women.  His 
sisters,  like  their  mother,  were  very  quiet  and  undemon- 
strative, and  demonstration  was  so  little  necessary  to 
himself  that  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to  question  the  scanty 
measure  of  his  wife's  tenderness.  So  it  was  only  little 
by  little,  very  slowly  and  very  dimly,  that  as  the  years 
went  on  he  realized  what  a  simulacrum  he  had  mistaken 
for  a  madonna. 

One  of  the  first  of  his  tardy  discoveries  was  that  his  lit- 
tle Fanny  would  have  her  own  way,  and  that  when  her 
wilfulness  was  questioned  she  could  pout  and  scold  most 
vigorously.  In  fact,  the  good-natured  imperiousness  and 
despotism  of  her  usual  home  manner  were  quite  incredible. 
In  general,  men  are  more  selfish  in  the  domestic  circle 
than  women,  and  not  without  some  show  of  reason  when 
they  furnish  the  entire  support  of  that  circle.  But  here 
and  there  is  a  woman — always  a  capable  woman,  too — who 


128  NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

plants  herself  in  the  centre  of  her  family  as  in  an  easy 
chair,  and  makes  the  rest  giveSvay  to  her  weight  and  her 
elbows  just  when  and  how  she  pleases.  No  tyrants  are 
more  intolerable,  and  such  a  tyrant  was  Fanny ;  but  Mr. 
Howe  was  so  much  in  love  with  her,  and  so  much  down 
town  on  business,  that  the  slavery  in  which  he  practically 
lived  was  not  a  very  heavy  yoke  for  him  to  bear. 

His  home  always  looked  so  inviting  as  he  entered  it, 
his  youthful  wife  was  always  so  bright,  so  dainty,  so  co- 
quettishly  dressed  and  generally  in  such  sparkling  spirits, 
that  she  at  once  satisfied  and  amused  him.  He  was  proud 
of  her  housekeeping,  proud  of  her  personality,  and  very 
soon  reconciled  himself  to  such  little  crosses  as  having  cer- 
tain dishes  that  he  could  not  abide  continually  on  his 
table,  while  his  beloved  johnny-cake  and  fish-balls  and 
baked  beans,  which  Fanny  detested,  were  as  continually 
excluded.  He  had  had  his  breakfast  not  later  than  half- 
past  seven  all  his  life,  and  one  of  his  bachelor  dreams  had 
been  of  a  pink-and-white  little  breakfast  divinity  in  a 
white  morning-dress  pouring  his  coffee  for  him.  But  the 
Dexter  girls  were  inveterate  late  risers,  and  Fanny  de- 
clared that  if  Mr.  Howe  wanted  an  early  breakfast  he 
could  eat  it  alone;  she  couldn't  possibly  be  down  before 
half-past  eight — and  alone  he  would  daily  have  been  had 
not  his  sister  Jeannette  taken  pains  to  sit  down  to  the  meal 
with  him  as  when  they  boarded  together  before  his  mar- 
riage. 

Dinner,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Howe  would  have  pre- 
ferred at  half-past  six.  He  worked  so  very  hard  that  after 
coming  home  he  liked  to  lie  and  rest  on  the  lounge  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  or  twenty  minutes  before  dressing  for 
the  evening.     But  Fanny  wanted  it  at  six,  so  as  to  have 


NBW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  129 

more  time  and  not  be  hurried  in  case  they  wished  to  go 
out  afterwards.  "Why,  Davy,"  she  expostulated,  "you 
can  lie  down  after  dinner  just  as  well  as  before,  and  take  a 
longer  nap,  even — and  it  is  so  much  better  for  the  ser- 
vants !  They  get  through  their  work  earlier  and  it 
makes  'em  more  contented.  It's  a  shame  to  make  the 
poor  things  work  so  late!  "  Of  course  the  dinner  hour 
was  fixed  at  six,  and  promptly  to  the  minute  Mrs.  Fanny 
sat  down,  whether  the  head  of  the  house  were  there  or  not. 
"If  I  should  wait,  it  would  only  get  you  into  bad  habits, 
Davy,  you  know  it  would  !  First  it  would  be  five  minutes 
every  day,  and  then  ten,  and  then  twenty,  and  everything 
would  be  kept  waiting  and  get  spoiled.  If  men  won't  be 
punctual  they  can't  expect  good  meals;  "  and  it  came  to 
poor  Howe's  actually  bribing  his  own  waitress  to  keep  his 
dinner  hot  for  him  when  he  was  late,  as  otherwise  his  wife 
would  let  him  help  himself  to  a  cold  one,  and  all  on  the 
score  of  his  own  good — with  absolute  unconcern. 

\nd  so  it  was  in  cases  innumerable.  Mr.  Howe  chose 
a  particular  stand  in  the  back  drawing-room  for  his  papers 
and  pamphlets,  and  when  Fanny  quietly  determined  they 
shouldn't  stay  there,  and  vowed  and  declared  every  time 
they  disappeared  that  she  had  not  seen  them  and  knew 
nothing  about  them,  he  simply  looked  about  for  a  drawer 
somewhere  else,  and  contented  himself  with  that.  His 
eyes  were  sensitive  to  light  in  the  evening,  but  Fanny 
loved  light  in  floods,  and  always  had  the  room  she  herself 
sat  in,  at  least,  so  brilliantly  illuminated  that  her  husband 
was  often  driven  back  as  far  as  the  lounge  in  the  dining- 
room  before  he  could  escape  the  glare.  It  would  no  more 
have  occurred  to  her  to  provide  shaded  lights  for  the  weary 
one  in  his  own  parlors,  than  it  would  to  sit  in  the  dark  al- 


I30  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

together.  Whatever  happened,  Fanny  Howe  was  always 
comfortable.  Others  might  vtake  care  of  themselves  as 
they  could. 

Another  of  Mr.  Howe's  traditions  was  that  of  going  reg- 
ularly to  church  on  Sunday  morning.  It  was  almost  a  su- 
perstition. To  please  Fanny  he  gave  up  his  pew  in  the 
Universalist  church  he  had  long  attended,  and  took  one 
in  a  fashionable  Episcopal  one  where  they  knew  not  a 
soul,  exchanging  a  thoughtful,  clever,  interesting  discourse 
which  echoed  his  own  sentiments,  and  which  he  enjoyed 
in  a  cheerful  auditorium  wherein  sat  also  several  of  his 
friends  and  acquaintances,  for  a  long  service  in  which  he 
did  not  join,  carried  on  in  a  gothic  building  gloomy  as  a 
prison  with  stained  glass,  and  which  was  ended  by  a 
twenty-minute  reiteration  of  well-worn  tenets,  very  few  of 
which  he  believed.  The  sacrifice  made,  Fanny  found  so 
jnany  excuses  for  staying  at  home  on  Sunday  mornings, 
that  instead  of  flocking  punctually  in  with  his  pretty  wife 
and  the  rest  of  the  congregation  as  regularly  as  the  day 
came  round,  half  the  time  this  literally  *' dissenting  "  hus- 
band had  to  spend  the  consecrated  hours  alone  in  his  un- 
congenial pew,  doing  the  family  religion  for  himself  and 
his  Episcopalian  worser  half  as  well ! 

But  the  sufferer  without  compensation  from  Fanny's 
thorough  selfishness  was  Mr.  Howe's  sister  Jeanette. 
Fanny  was  married  when  only  eighteen,  while  the  latter 
was  already  twenty-two.  She  chose,  therefore,  to  consider 
her  sister-in-law  almost  an  ''  old  maid,"  and  from  the  first, 
though  she  resented  the  fact  of  Mr.  Howe's  having  to 
support  Jeanette,  she  took  the  ground  that  the  young  lady 
would  never  marry  and  was  a  predestined  spinster. 

Miss  Howe  was  a  tiny  little  creature  with  a  pretty  figure 


A^EW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  131 

and  a  sweet  but  resigned  and  melancholy  face.  She  had 
an  eligible  admirer  who  had  sighed  in  vain  for  encourage- 
ment for  at  least  five  years ;  but  Jeanette  was  all  delicacy, 
and  would  not  accept  him  without  love — yet  love  him  she 
could  not,  because  her  heart  had  once  been  given  boot- 
lessly  away,  and  the  poor  girl  could  never  get  it  back 
again.  This,  however,  was  a  secret,  and  all  her  friends 
scolded  because,  without  any  apparent  reason,  she  would 
not  smile  on  the  devoted  Wilder. 

Fanny  so  thoroughly  despised  her  for  her  obstinacy  that 
she  made  her  life  a  burden  to  her  without  scruple.  The 
pavement  she  walked  on  was  not  more  a  mere  convenience 
to  her  than  Jeanette.  She  herself  had  taken  her  first  good 
offer  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  why  should  this  penniless 
thing  be  more  squeamish  and  hang  herself  for  life  round 
her  brother's  neck?  And  yet  Jeanette  had  never  asked 
her  brother  for  much  money.  He  had  educated  her,  and 
she  had  expected  to  teach  for  a  living  in  return ;  but  he 
preferred  to  associate  her  in  his  social  and  domestic  world 
with  himself,  and  as  she  suffered  among  strangers,  and  was 
deeply  attached  to  him  besides,  she  gladly  acquiesced  in 
his  decision. 

In  return  she  had  taken  care  to  make  as  slight  a 
drain  upon  his  purse  for  her  expenses  as  possible.  She  was 
always  fearing  he  could  not  afford  it,  and  when  she  saw 
the  presents  he  lavished  upon  his  betrothed,  and  afterward 
the  scale  upon  which  the  pair  set  up  housekeeping, 
together  with  the  cost  and  abundance  of  her  sister-in-law's 
wardrobe,  she  was  stupefied.  She  pondered  over  her 
brother's  resources,  and  as  she  did  not  nearly  know  them 
all,  she  could  not  make  out  how  they  should  be  adequate 
to  such  an  expenditure.      She  was  a  care-taking,  anxious 


132  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

little  creature,  and  whatever  she  feared,  she  saw  that  it 
would  be  in  vain  to  w^rn  David,  and  so  she  simply 
exerted  her  energies  to  save  in  any  direction  she  could. 

Mrs.  Howe  took  these  efforts  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Jeanette  had  long  made  most  of  her  own  clothes  and  done 
all  her  brother's  mending;  now,  in  addition,  whenever  a 
seamstress  or  a  dressmaker  came  to  the  house,  Jeanette  sat 
and  sewed  with  her  all  day.  Whenever  there  was  company, 
Jeanette  hovered  round  the  cook  and  the  waitress  and  did 
the  odds  and  ends  that  show  for  nothing,  and  yet  that  take 
so  long  to  accomplish  and  are  so  indispensable  to  the 
finish  of  a  drawing  room  or  a  dinner ;  or  if  an  errand  had 
to  be  done  in  a  hurry,  it  was  always  Jeanette  who  could 
spare  an  hour  for  it. 

When  the  babies  came,  one  after  another,  equally  was  it 
Jeanette  who  filled  up  the  gaps,  took  care  of  them  when 
the  nurse  had  her  weekly  day  off,  sat  up  in  the  evening 
with  them  when  they  were  wakeful,  helped  with  the  mend- 
ing of  their  dainty  clothes,  and  even  weaned  them.  In 
short,  Jeanette  was  the  family  factotum,  and  for  wages, 
she  had  her  board,  a  room  with  one  of  the  children  as 
they  increased  in  number,  and  the  making-over  of  Fanny's 
cast-off  dresses — it  being  one  of  the  latter' s  persistent 
fictions  to  the  generous  Howe,  who  was  periodically 
anxious  about  it,  that  Jeanette  preferred  to  re-fashion 
Fanny's  things,  since,  being  already  fitted,  this  was  '^  so 
much  less  trouble  and  responsibility  !  " 

A  married  woman  can  do  immensely  much  toward  help- 
ing an  unmarried  one  to  a  ''settlement"  if  she  choose. 
The  simple  appearance  of  value  that  one  woman  may  have 
for  another  often  goes  a  great  way  with  a  man,  just  as  to 
see  a  man  popular  with  men  gives  him  an  added  value  and 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  133 

prestige  in  the  eyes  of  women.  If  Fanny  had  felt  the 
regard  and  admiration  for  Jeanette  that  the  latter' s 
devotion  deserved,  and  had  shown  it — if  she  had  taken 
care  that  she  was  always  freshly  and  piquantly  dressed, 
and  had  placed  her  at  least  on  equal  terms  with  herself 
in  entertaining  company,  her  gentle  sister-in-law  would 
probably  have  proved  sufficiently  attractive  to  have  had, 
not  one,  but  several  chances  to  forget  the  early  lover  who 
had  been  false  to  her. 

But  such  a  course  never  occurred  to  the  egotism 
which  dimmed  poor  little  Jeanette' s  social  candle  on 
all  occasions  without  scruple.  At  dinner  the  interesting 
man  was  of  course  always  at  Fanny's  right  hand,  and  after 
dinner  nothing  was  easier  than  to  monopolize  his  attention 
in  a  dozen  different  ways.  She  would  propose  a  game  of 
cards  and  herself  would  be  his  partner,  or  they  would 
adjourn  to  the  billiard  room  for  a  trial  of  skill  together. 

If  the  theatre  had  been  arranged  for,  Fanny  of  course 
would  enter  the  seats  first,  then  their  guest,  then  Miss 
Jeanette  and  Mr.  Howe,  and  returning  home  the  two 
former  would  pair  off  and  the  latter  would  follow.  Were 
the  evening  to  be  spent  at  home,  in  whichever  of  the  two 
parlors  they  were  sitting,  Fanny  was  apt  to  get  into  the 
other  with  the  stranger,  either  to  look  out  of  the  window 
at  the  weather,  or  to  examine  a  new  house-plant  that  had 
been  sent  in,  or  to  turn  over  her  photograph  album,  or  to 
dance  a  little  together  with  Jeanette  turni^suca  a  rather 
lame  w^altz.  It  was  simply  wonderful,  Fanny's  flirtatious 
ingenuity,  and  none  but  eyes  as  fond  and  faithful  as  David 
Howe's  could  have  failed  to  see  how  his  wife  absorbed 
whatever  man  happened  to  be  about,  and  how  Jeanette 
was  definitely  relegated  to  the  background. 


134  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Even  if  the  baby  cried,  before  the  pretty  mamma  would 
stir  from  the  depths  of  her  floiinces,  Jeannette  had  to  see 
what  was  the  matter  and  report.  Fanny  and  Julia,  by  the 
way,  both  had  the  most  alluring  way  of  leaning  back  in  a 
low  arm-chair  amid  the  soft  luxury  of  their  silken  skirts 
and  with  their  little  white  and  jewelled  hands  before 
them,  of  looking  singularly  fascinating  and  seductive — 
though  in  Julia's  case  it  was  the  charming  but  touch-me- 
not  woman  to  be  respected  as  much  as  admired  that  the 
beholder  contemplated,  while  to  the  experienced  eye, 
Fanny  was  the  would-be  siren  who  was  restrained  just  so 
long  as  impulse  and  temptation  did  not  combine. 

The  woman  of  pleasure  invariably  presents  a  consistent 
combination  of  extravagance  and  greed.  No  matter  with 
what  reckless  profusion  she  may  spend,  she  is  always  care- 
ful to  look  after  possible  additions  to  her  resources,  be 
they  never  so  small.  Fanny  was  an  adept  at  eating  phil- 
opoenas,  at  making  bets,  at  giving  hints  to  her  men  friends 
regarding  her  lesser  wants,  and  in  return  for  her  smiles 
and  invitations  they  were  but  too  happy  to  send  her  flow- 
ers, fruit,  boxes  of  bon-bons  or  of  gloves,  or  any  other 
trifle  they  judged  might  please  her  fancy.  Secretly,  Mr. 
Howe  did  not  relish  it  at  all,  but  since  such  evidences  of 
appreciation  gave  great  pleasure  to  their  recipient,  his  del- 
icacy did  not  permit  him  to  interpose.  He  thought  she 
would  be  as  much  distressed  and  shocked  to  be  found 
fault  with  as  he  would  be  to  find  the  fault,  whereas  there 
are  few  greater  mistakes  in  human  nature  than  to  waste 
delicacy  on  obtuse  and  selfish  people — on  the  ruthless 
characters  who  themselves  trample  down  all  before  them. 
As  well  appeal  to  an  elephant  with  a  feather  duster  instead 
of  with  the  pitch-fork  which  alone  can  pierce  his  tough 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  135 

integument.  A  storm  of  passion,  a  whirlwind  of  jealousy, 
a  few  up-and-down  commands,  Fanny  would  have  respect- 
ed and  responded  to — nay,  after  her  fashion,  might  have 
loved.  But  to  Mr.  Howe's  romantic  and  elevated  nature 
such  resources  of  the  lower  atmosphere  were  impossible. 

The  lover  of  his  race  might  contemplate  the  spectacle 
of  a  family  of  children  being  committed  to  such  guar- 
dianship as  Fanny's  with  unmixed  dismay;  but  truth  to 
say,  the  little  ones  of  this  utterly  ill-regulated  mother  were 
obedient,  well-behaved  and  sweet — Fanny's  passion  for 
order  and  perfection  in  her  little  domain  extending  even 
to  the  habits  and  manners  of  her  babies.  Moreover,  their 
mother  was  so  determined  to  have  her  own  way  that  when 
she  said  "no"  they  knew  it  was  ''no" — and  better  con- 
viction cannot  enter  into  the  childish  mind  than  that.  On 
it  may  rest  the  all-important  conception  that  Life  itself  is 
an  affair  of  Law — of  submission  to  a  Higher  Power. 


V 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  JOYS   OF  FLIRTATION. 

Mrs.  Howe's  gay  camaraderie  with  men  had  in  general 
no  serious  consequences,  nor  was  it  intended  to  have  any. 
If  her  manner  expressed  that  universal  personal  leaning 
toward  the  other  sex  which  characterizes  all  true  flirts 
and  is  the  secret  of  their  magnetism,  it  was  enjoyed,  but 
seldom  misunderstood  by  those  whom  most  it  flaitered.  If 
Mr.  Howe's  friends  and  associates  contributed  to  her  life 
the  zest  which  she  craved,  they  mostly  stopped  where  she 
stopped,  according  to  the  native  American  fashion. 

But  women  who  play  a  game  that  is  really  with  fire,  of 
course  take  always  the  chance  of  a  conflagration.  When 
this  fascinating  young  matron  was  about  twenty-four,  she 
met  at  Belmont  Springs  one  July,  where  part  of  the  Dex- 
ter summer  contingent  was  spending  six  weeks,  a  suscept- 
ible youth  who  took  her  frank  ways  and  caressing  manner 
for  anything  but  amusement.  The  son  of  an  unedu- 
cated American  who  had  made  a  large  fortune  in 
Montreal — he  was  a  high-strung,  flighty,  superficial  crea- 
ture of  nineteen  or  twenty,  not  overweighted  with  brains, 
and  passionately  fond  of  music.  As  he  sang  a  little,  and 
extemporized  in  a  dashing  and  fragmentary  way  on  the 
piano,  he  thought  himself  a  genius,  of  course,  and  the 
secret  passport  to  his  affections  was  appreciation  of  his 
music. 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  137 

This  Fanny  immediately  perceived,  and  in  her  almost 
involuntary  way  began  to  flatter  him  to  the  top  of  his 
bent.  To  have  the  perfumed,  silken-clad  New  Yorker 
hanging  upon  his  performance — leaning  on  the  piano  or 
sitting  near  him  by  the  hour  while  he  played — was  heaven 
to  the  vain  young  fellow,  and  Fanny  lavished  her  alluring 
smiles,  her  little  sighs,  her  sympathethic  pressure  of  the 
hand  upon  this  inexperienced  heart  until,  like  wood 
under  a  burning-glass,  it  burst  into  flames — into  one 
of  those  insensate  passions  that  sometimes  seize  upon 
sensitive  but  ill-regulated  natures,  and  run  away  with 
them. 

The  guests  at  the  hotel  soon  remarked  that  Fanny  and 
Philip  Harrison,  as  he  was  called,  were  always  together 
and  nearly  always  apart  from  other  people.  The  youth, 
in  fact,  simply  gave  himself  up  to  the  enchantress,  and  he 
paid  liberally  for  the  privilege  of  spending  every  moment 
in  her  society  that  he  possibly  could.  Boats,  horses  and 
conveyances  were  every  day  at  the  service  of  her  party  at 
his  expense,  and  the  wretched  cookery  of  the  country  hotel 
was  agreeably  diversified  by  the  hampers  of  wine  and 
other  delicacies  which  arrived  delightfully  from  Montreal 
just  when  they  were  wanted.  The  pair  fished  together, 
they  walked  together,  they  lounged  together  on  the  seats 
of  the  grove  which  surrounded  the  house,  or  they  strolled 
down  and  sat  on  the  rocks  of  the  lake  shore  together. 
Fanny  took  tolerable  care  to  have  some  one  within  chap- 
eroning distance,  and  she  drew  the  line  at  driving  alone 
with  Harrison.  But  for  the  rest  she  cared  not  a  farthing 
what  anybody  thought  or  anybody  said.  In  the  evening 
they  ensconced  themselves  on  the  long  piazza  in  a  distant 
corner  of  their  own,  she  in  a  low  chair  and  he  on  the 


138  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

steps  at  her  feet,  and  if  she  knew  that  he  was  kissing  her 
dress,  or  even,  when  it  was  c^uite  dark,  if  he  took  posses- 
sion of  her  hand  for  the  same  purpose,  she  thought  it  no 
one's  affair  but  her  own. 

Five  weeks  flew  all  too  quickly  by  for  the  intoxicated 
Harrison.  When  the  sixth  arrived,  at  whose  close  he 
knew  she  must  leave  the  Springs,  the  dreadful  reflection 
broke  over  him — What  should  he  do  without  her  ?  What 
was  life  to  be,  lacking  this  charming  presence  which  filled 
it  as  champagne  fills  the  wine-cup,  and  which  had  sudden- 
ly become  the  one  imperative  need  of  his  existence  ?  He 
exhatisted  all  his  powers  of  persuasion  in  trying  to  make 
her  stay  but  a  fortnight  instead  of  a  week  longer,  and 
when  he  failed,  the  black  shadow  of  his  coming  calamity 
invaded  even  the  wretched  modicum  of  time  that  was  left 
him. 

Our  pleasure-lover  had  most  thoroughly  enjoyed  this 
prodigal  devotion  and  all  the  good  things  it  had  so  lav- 
ishly brought  her,  but  what  now  to  do  with  the  violent 
passion  she  had  so  invoked,  she  did  not  know.  It  was 
the  last  evening  of  her  stay.  She  had  been  packing,  and 
for  some  hours  Harrison  had  perforce  seen  nothing  of  her. 
After  the  early  country  tea  they  were  sitting  on  the  piazza 
as  often  before,  when  he  begged  her  to  walk  with  him  to 
a  favorite  seat  of  theirs  close  to  the  lake  and  deep  within 
the  grove.  The  poor  youth  felt  that  he  must  get  away 
where  the  energy  of  agony  that  was  within  him  could 
speak  above  the  low  undertone  of  their  ordinary  inter- 
course. 

When  they  reached  their  resting-place  Fanny  seated 
herself  on  a  bench  under  the  overshadowing  trees,  and  the 
agitated  Philip  stood  looking  down  upon  her. 


NEIV  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  139 

*  *  So  you  are  going — you  will  go — to-morrow  ?  "  he 
burst  out. 

''Why,  Phil,  of  course!  What  did  you  expect?"  re- 
turned she,  pettishly.  '*  Do  you  think  a  married  woman 
has  no  other  vocation  than  to  stay  round  enjoying  life  as 
long  as  her  young  gentleman  friends  want  to  have  her?  " 

''True,"  said  Philip,  bitterly.  "The  mail  reminded 
me  every  day  that  there  is  a  Mr.  Howe,  and  I  suppose 
you  must  now  go  back  to  him.  Tell  me,  do  you  love 
him  ?  I  have  never  asked  if  you  love  me  !  I  say,  do  you 
love  him  ? ' ' 

"Of  course  I  do!"  cried  Fanny,  virtuously.  "He's 
the  best  man  in  the  world." 

"I  can't  conceive  of  your  caring  anything  for  him  and 
being  as — as — "  he  hesitated,  "  as  kind  to  me  as  you  have 
been.  If  I  had  a  wife  and  she  allowed  any  other  man  to 
be  devoted  to  her,  I  would  shoot  her." 

"  Mr.  Howe  is  not  like  you,"  returned  Fanny,  tran- 
quilly.     "  He  has  perfect  confidence  in  me." 

"  Of  course  he  has  !  "  cried  the  distracted  youth,  wring- 
ing his  hands.  "  Of  course  you  are  married  !  Of  course 
you  are  utterly  out  of  my  reach  !  Of  course  I've  been  an 
infernal  fool  to  shut  my  eyes  and  simply  enjoy  the  mo- 
ments as  they  flew  !  But  all  the  same  it's  the  ruin  of  me. 
I  can  never  support  existence  away  from  you,  and  I've 
about  made  up  my  mind  not  to  try." 

"  Nonsense,  Phil !     What  do  you  mean?  " 

"  I  mean  one  better  die  than  live  if  one  can't  have  what 
one  wants  in  this  world." 

"Philip,"  said  Fanny,  seriously,  "  if  you  talk  this  way 
I  shall  be  sorry  I  ever  spoke  to  you  or  looked  at  you. 
Only  nineteen  years  old,  and  with  everything  to  live  for, 


I40  N£^V  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

and  to  make  a  fuss  about  an  old  married  woman  like  me  ! 
Nobody  has  what  they  want  in  th^s  world.  We  all  have  to 
take  what  we  can  get  and  be  thankful  for  it.  As  for  me, 
you'll  forget  me  the  very  next  pretty  face  you  see." 

* '  As  you  will  me  the  very  next  pleasant  fellow  you  meet 
— or  perhaps  as  soon  as  you  see  Mr.  Howe,  to  whom  you 
are  so  devotedly  attached,"  said  Philip,  scornfully. 

*'  You  need  not  be  sarcastic,  sir !  "  retorted  Fanny ;  "I 
do  think  everything  of  Mr.  Howe.  Poor  old  Davy !  I 
quite  long  to  see  him." 

*' You  dare  say  that  to  me — to  me.  Madam!  "  shouted 
Harrison,  beside  himself.  **  You  have  dared  to  let  me  de- 
vote myself  body  and  soul  to  you  all  these  weeks,  while  in 
reality  you  are  in  love  with  your  husband  ?  ' ' 

'''In  reality  in  love  with  my  husband?'"  echoed 
Fanny,  in  simulated  indignation.  "What  do  you  mean, 
Mr.  Harrison?  Did  you  suppose  I  was  anything  else? 
What  do  you  take  me  for?  I  tell  you,  of  course  I  love 
my  husband  better  than  any  one  else  in  the  world.  I 
never  dreamed — I  never  expressed — anything  for  you  but 
the  friendship  of  a  sister." 

"Damn  friendship!"  said  Philip,  savagely.  "You 
thought  it  was  friendship,  did  you? — brotherly  regard,  I 
suppose — that  made  me  lavish  kisses  on  your  little  white 
hand,  or  on  the  hem  of  your  dress,  or  devour  with  kisses 
your  ribbon  or  your  handkerchief  when  you  were  absent  ? 
In  New  York  that  is  called  friendship,  is  it  ?  In  Canada 
we  should  call  it  love." 

"  Philip  Harrison,"  said  Fanny,  severely,  "  you  have 
mistaken  me  altogether.  I  love  to  enjoy  myself,  and  so,  I 
thought,  did  you.  I  shouldn't  have  had  nearly  so  good  a 
time  without  you  at  these  stupid  Springs,  nor  would  you 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  141 

without  me.  Do  try  to  be  reasonable.  If  you  attached 
any  importance  to  kissing  my  hand,  I  assure  you  I  did 
not,  and  if  I  were  you  I  should  be  ashamed  to  let  my  feel- 
ings get  the  better  of  me  just  because  we  have  had  a  pleas- 
ant six  weeks  together." 

"  You  think  that  musicians — that  artists — can  regulate 
their  feelings  by  rule  and  measure  as  you  business  people 
evidently  do — eh  ?  Talk  to  me  of  being  '  reasonable  !  '  " 
cried  he,  wildly.  **  Do  you  know  how  I  feel  at  this 
moment,  and  as  I  believe  you  could  never  feel?  My 
heart  is  burning,  literally — burning  with  living  flames — 
like  those  Catholic  pictures  of  the  hearts  of  Jesus  and 
Mary !  Do  you  think  I  shall  do  nothing  to  put  such  tor- 
ment out — that  I  will  stand  it  ?  "  and  he  dashed  himself  on 
the  grass  at  her  feet  and  hid  his  face  in  his  arms. 

Fanny  suddenly  remembered  how  she  herself,  when  just 
such  an  undisciplined  child,  had  wanted  to  die  when  Harvey 
Thayer  left  her,  and  she  began  to  fear  that  poor  Harrison's 
melodramatics  might  mean  something  after  all.  A  genu- 
ine pity  welled  up  within  her — perhaps  more — a  genuine 
sympathy  for  a  spirit  lawless  and  reckless  like  her  own  ! 

"Philip!"  she  cried  appeal  ingly  and  bending  toward 
him,  *'I  implore  you!  Listen  to  me!  Be  good!  Be 
sweet !     What  can  I  do  ?     What  is  it  you  want  ?  ' ' 

<'You — I  want  you,  you,  you!'''  sobbed  the  wretched 
boy;  "  you  to  be  always  with  me  as  you've  been  these  six 
weeks ! ' ' 

*'  But  this  world  isn't  made  so,  dear  Philip  !  A  married 
woman  can't  come  and  go  as  she  will.  I  have  my  home 
and  my  children  and  my  duties.  You  would  not  have  me 
forsake  these?  You  know  it  is  impossible.  Nobody 
would  respect  me.     Don't  you  know  that?  " 


142  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

'*  Yes,  I  know  it,  and  I  do  not  ask  it.  But  since  I  can- 
not ask  it  and  cannot  have  it,  I  must  die.  The  lake — a 
pistol — must  end  it !  " 

''And  rob  me  of  my  friend,  and  break  your  parents' 
hearts,  and  have  everybody  crying  out  against  me,  and 
the  whole  story  come  to  my  husband's  ears?  And  all 
rather  than  endure  a  little  parting — a  little  pain  !  What 
cowardice  !  Can't  you  come  and  visit  me  in  New  York? 
Can't  you  come  here  again  next  summer?  We  are  always 
here  in  August."  He  did  not  answer  her.  ''Come! — 
speak  to  me,  Philip  !  ' ' 

He  lifted  himself  to  a  sitting  posture  and  waited  to 
stanch  his  tears  and  force  down  his  sobs.  At  last,  in 
broken  tones,  in  abject  despair,  and  with  sighs  still 
bursting  from  his  breast,  he  said : 

' '  What  perfect  mockery  you  talk  !  You  ask  me  to  en- 
dure torments  and  longing  that  I  cannot  endure,  in  order 
that  you  may  not  be  '  talked  about ; '  and  for  reward  you 
coolly  propose  to  play  this  game  over  and  over  again  every 
year  ! ' '  then  after  a  pause  and  with  a  miserable  smile, ' ' — sort 
of  '  sport  for  you  and  death  for  me,'  as  the  frogs  said." 

"  Oh,  Philip,  how  cruel  you  are  to  me !  " 

He  did  not  reply,  and  Fanny  sat  troubled  on  her  bench, 
leaning  her  head  against  the  tree  beside  it.  The  grassy 
grove  sloped  gently  toward  the  water  and  met  the  clean 
slate  rocks  that  with  their  fringe  of  pebbles  and  sand  lined 
the  lovely  shore.  The  sun  was  just  dropping  behind  a  low 
mountain  across  the  lake,  and  his  last  level  beams  turned 
the  expanse  between  into  a  great  sheet  of  rippling  gold, 
then  struck  on  the  tree-trunks  and  on  the  grass  and  on  the 
grief-torn  face  before  her. 

As  the  giant  orb  disappeared  down  his  glowing  abyss, 


NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHGXIC  STUDY.  143 

Philip  murmured :  "Just  like  that  I'm  going  to  plunge 
out  of  sight — and  all  through  you  !  ' ' 

*<  Philip,"  cried  Fanny,  passionately,  ''if  I  thought 
you  were  serious  I  should  be  beside  myself!  But  you  are 
only  trying  to  frighten  me — confess  that  you  are  !  "  He 
shook  his  head,  turning  upon  her  such  burning  and  des- 
perate eyes  that  perforce  she  dropped  her  voice  and  mur- 
mured— "Do  you  really  love  me  so  much  as  to  want  to 
die  for  me  ?  I  never  imagined  such  love !  I  can  never 
repay  it !     No,  you  cannot  mean  it?  " 

He  lifted  a  fold  of  her  dress  adoringly  in  his  hand  and 
kissed  it.  ''Not  mean  it — when  you  are  my  life — my 
soul  ?  Is  there  any  music  in  my  organ-pipes  at  home 
with  the  breath  all  out  of  them? — and  what  is  my  life 
now  with  you  going  out  of  it?  Oh — if  I  had  never  seen 
you!''  and  he  dropped  his  head  in  his  hands. 

"Then,  Philip,  if  you  really  care  for  me,  I  have  only 
one  word  to  say  to  you — wait !  Wait  six  months.  For- 
get for  the  present  this  horrible  thought,  this  horrible  pur- 
pose, and  see  if  you  feel  the  same  in  half  a  year.  Do  it 
for  my  sake,  dear,  dear  Philip,"  bending  over  him  and 
taking  his  hand  away  from  his  eyes,  ' '  and  this  will  give 
me,  too,  time  to  think,  to  weigh  and  consider  everything. 
Believe  me,  I  will  not  wreck  your  life.  You  shall  corre- 
spond with  me  constantly.  You  can  come  to  New  York 
— and  in  the  meantime,  go  into  society — go  among  men  ! 
Amuse  yourself,  as  with  all  your  money  you  can  so  easily 
do.  Why,  Phil,"  lightly,  "if  you  kill  yourself,  I  shall 
have  to  kill  myself,  too,  to  escape  the  scandal — and  just 
imagine  cheerful  '  Fanny  '  stiff  and  cold  under  the  water  !  " 
— thus  the  cool;,  collected  woman  to  the  tortured,  inexpe- 
rienced boy,  until  by  alternate  bantering  and  tenderness, 


144  ^EW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

she  thought,  though  he  answered  little,  that  she  had  per- 
suaded him  out  of  his  despair. 

Suddenly  from  the  grass  he  writhed  up  round  her  like  a 
serpent,  kneeling  beside  her,  his  arms  clasping  her  with 
passionate,  madman  strength. 

''  Kiss  me! — once! — but  once !  "  he  whispered,  fiercely, 
and  unresisting  she  bent  down  lips  that  it  was  sacrilege  for 
him  to  touch. 

Never  afterward  could  he  recall  that  kiss — that  longed- 
for,  forbidden,  supreme  moment — for  its  very  intensity 
swooned  it  away  into  oblivion,  and,  dazed  and  blinded  as 
if  after  a  whelming  surge,  he  found  himself  walking  by  her 
on  their  way  back  to  the  hotel. 

For  her,  its  scarlet  force  burnt  for  hours  upon  her  lips 
like  a  blood-red  seal.  Was  it  perhaps  the  seal  of  her 
compact  with  the  Evil  One — Satan's  prophetic  marking  of 
his  own  ?  Ah,  if  she  could  have  feared  so  herself,  and 
after  that  first  violation  of  her  wedded  consecration,  could 
have  rushed  back  from  the  Rubicon  whose  singing  siren 
waves  were  as  yet  but  curling  about  her  feet ! 

Harrison's  haggard  and  stricken  face  the  next  morning 
when  he  said  good-bye,  haunted  Fanny's  heart  even  in 
busy  New  York,  for  a  week. 

On  his  return  to  Montreal  he  took  her  advice  precisely 
as  she  had  intended ;  that  is,  he  did  not  kill  his  body,  but 
he  did  his  best  to  kill  his  soul  by  plunging  into  pursuits 
and  company  that  left  him  little  room  for  pure  or  romantic 
loves.  In  these  new  scenes  he  met  a  wild  medical  student 
who  was  going  to  study  in  Paris,  and  as  Philip  spoke 
French  fluently  he  decided  to  accompany  him  thither. 
About  half  a  year  after  the  episode  at  Belmont  Springs 
he  surprised  Fanny  by  calling  at  her  New  York  home  to 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  145 

tell  her  that  he  was  off  for  France.  His  whole  effect  was 
coarser  and  he  had  a  ''■  fast "  look. 

"Was  I  not  right,"  said  she,  in  her  sauciest  manner, 
<'to  tell  you  to  wait  six  months?  Isn't  this  life,  with  its 
Montreal  and  Paris  and  lots  of  other  nice  things,  better 
than  that  cold  lake  ?  ' ' 

He  looked  at  her  at  first  steadfastly,  then  sternly,  as  she 
stood  there  smiling  and  flashing  in  her  silken  draperies, 
her  well-loved  diamonds  in  her  ears  and  on  her  hands, 
and  answered  deliberately:  "No,  Mrs.  Howe,  it  is  not. 
It  would  have  been  better  for  me  if  I  had  then  and  there 
taken  my  own  life;  and  what  is  more,  something  tells  me 
that  it  would  have  been  better  far  for  you  if  I  had  also 
taken  yours." 

I^anny  smiled  a  confident  smile  to  herself  as  he  left  the 
hoii.se.  She  had  pla\ed  with  fire  and  come  out  un- 
scorched.  "Poor  little  Phil!"  said  she  to  herself; 
"he's  a  half-crazy  creature  and  always  will  be.  If  it 
hadn't  been  me  it  would  have  been  somebody  else.  He 
has  no  common  sense.  He  imagines  half  he  says  !  "  and 
then  she  thought  no  more  about  him.  Not  to  a  callow 
youth  could  this  strong  and  steel-like  nature  bend  ! 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE    CALVERTS    ABROAD. 

There  are  in  the  world  wise  and  wonderful  women  who 
after  once  detecting  in  the  men  they  have  married  the 
tendency  to  inconstancy,  never  again  give  it  a  chance  to 
develop.  Such  a  wife  gives  no  hint  of  her  humiliating 
discovery,  but  cheerful,  self-controlled,  devoted,  makes 
herself  a  second  self  to  her  husband,  his  shadow — his  min- 
istrant — indispensable — conforming  to  him  as  a  well-bro- 
ken shoe  conforms  to  the  foot,  and  above  all,  never  leav- 
ing him  too  long  at  a  time  !  If  with  all  this  she  knows 
enough  about  dress  to  be  pleasant  to  look  upon,  her  mar- 
ried success  is  assured.  Her  husband  will  adore  her,  nor 
ever  suspect  the  almost  superhuman  skill  she  has  displayed 
in  holding  him.  True  that  this  is  hardly  the  highest  ideal 
of  the  relation.  As  a  woman  once  said  of  it — "  If  it's  a 
pleasure  to  win  a  husband,  it's  a  penance  to  keep  him  !  " 
But  the  type  of  wife  who  thinks  it  "  pays"  is  in  England 
a  frequent  one.  In  our  own  much  more  individualized 
civilization,  it  is  far  more  rare,  and  it  is  needless  to  say 
that  it  was  the  last  type  upon  which  Julia  Calvert,  even 
had  fate  permitted,  would  have  stooped  to  model  her  own 
haughty  and  exacting  spirit. 

Fate  did  not  permit.  Calvert  had  not  yet  got  over  his 
regret  and  repentance  for  having  so  shocked  and  grieved 
his  once  ''  little  queen  "  and  now  mother  of  his  child,  and 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  147 

Julia  was  reigning  almost  as  much  the  spoiled  and  petted 
woman  as  when  they  were  first  married — when  the  great 
importing  house  that  employed  him  raised  his  salary  and 
promoted  him  to  be  the  foreign  buyer  in  his  department, 
rhe  new  position  would  require  him  to  go  abroad,  prin- 
cipally to  France,  twice  a  year ;  but  this  welcome  rise  in 
business  life,  great  opportunity  though  it  was  to  complete 
his  business  training  and  form  foreign  connections  by 
which  he  would  be  able  some  day  to  set  up  for  himself, 
was  practically  the  knell  of  the  now  disillusioned  Calvert 
union,  since  more  marriages  are  shattered  by  the  mui:i- 
tudes  of  American  husbands  whose  affairs  compel  them  to 
travel  continually,  than  by  any  other  cause  except  the  uni- 
versal summer  flittings  from  their  homes  of  city  wives.  It 
is  so  easy  to  grow  apart,  and,  once  apart,  it  is  so  impos- 
sible to  grow  again  together  ! 

Naturally  our  youthful  pair  did  not  see  it  in  that  light, 
nor  did  their  friends.  Ever  since  Fanny's  marriage  and 
housekeeping,  the  Dexter  women  had  been  longing  that 
Julia  should  be  back  in  New  York — and  for  one  thing. 
Calvert's  increased  income  meant  a  removal  to  a  house  in 
the  beloved  city  so  soon  as  their  Brooklyn  lease  should  ex- 
pire. For  another,  it  meant,  at  least  in  Mrs.  Dexter' s  im- 
agination, the  glorious  distinction  for  Julia  of  frequent 
trips  to  Europe  with  her  husband.  Of  course  Calvert 
could  not  take  her  with  him  the  first  time,  but  he  vowed 
he  would  the  second,  *'and  meantime,  Juley,  you  can  be 
studying  up  your  French,"  said  he,  as  with  love  in  his 
heart  and  on  his  lips,  with  regrets  at  leaving  her  and  with 
joyous  anticipations  of  the  new  experiences  that  were  beck- 
oning before  him,  he  tore  himself  away. 

The  indolent  but  constant  Julia,  who,  like  her  father, 


148  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

was  never  restless  and  hated  changes,  had  a  dreary  feeling 
that  one  chapter  in  her  life  wasi  closed ;  but  nothing  could 
exceed  Mrs.  Dexter' s  elation  at  being  able  to  tell  the  un- 
happy natives  in  Belmont,  that  Mr.  Calvert  had  ''gone  to 
Europe, ' '  and  would  moreover  be  obliged  in  future  to  go 
thither  twice  a  year. 

''  He  writes  every  steamer,"  said  she,  ''  and  is  perfectly 
carried  away  with  Paris !  He  says  that  compared  with 
Paris  New  York  is  a  cobble-stone  to  a  diamond — (as  true, 
by  the  way,  in  1892,  as  it  was  in  1855).  Of  course  Julia 
could  not  go  with  him  the  first  time,  but  he  is  determined 
to  take  her  next  time.  He  writes — *  Mother  will  keep 
house  for  you  and  take  care  of  Clara,  and  I  must  have  you 
over  here  to  see  this  splendid,  this  magnificent  city.  I  al- 
ways thought  nothing  could  beat  our  store,  but  it's  noth- 
ing to  the  stores  in  Paris !  '  But  Frank  says  it's  hard 
work  finding  boots  and  slippers  small  enough  for  Jule ! 
He  says  the  clerks  stare  when  he  shows  them  her  shoe 
and  tells  them  it  is  his  wife's!  He  isn't  going  to  have 
her  wear  anything  now  but  what  comes  from  Paris-a-h ' ' 
— with  her  own  ineffable  air.  "  Everything  there  is  so 
superior  to  what  we  have  over  here !  But  I  dread  it,  I 
dread  it!" — with  a  sign  of  resignation.  ''Julia  will 
probably  be  on  the  water  half  the  time  now,  more  or 
less,  and  I  shall  never  be  able  to  sleep  when  the  wind 
blows-a-h !  ' ' 

Calvert  did  write  by  every  steamer,  and  did  think  of  his 
little  wife  faithfully  all  the  time  he  was  gone.  He  saw 
dozens  of  things  he  wanted  to  buy  for  her,  but  generally 
he  refrained,  because,  as  he  told  her  when  he  got  back: 
**  You  must  go  over  to  get  fitted  before  we  can  make  a  real 
Parisienne  out  of  you.     You'd  only  half  spoil  the  things, 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  149 

having  'em  made  up  here — they're  so  ahead  in  style  !  " 
When  he  returned,  they  decided  that  she  had  best  remain 
behind  also  the  second  time,  both  because  he  was  still 
'*  learning  the  ropes  "  as  he  expressed  it,  and  because  they 
could  now  afford  to  leave  Brooklyn  and  take  a  house  near 
the  Howes.  The  moving  happily  accomplished,  on  his 
third  trip  Julia  really  found  herself  on  the  steamer  with 
him,  while  Mrs.  Dexter  was  left,  radiant  with  satisfaction, 
to  the  exquisite  enjoyment  of  keeping  house  in  New  York 
for  them  while  they  should  be  gone. 

Julia  might  have  been  studying  French  the  preceding 
year,  so  as  to  fit  herself  to  make  the  most  of  her  Parisian 
experience  when  it  came ;  but  with  all  her  natural  clever- 
ness, she  had  never  made  a  genuine  intellectual  effort  in 
her  life,  and  to  master  a  language,  even  imperfectly,  was 
more  than  her  indolent  temperament  would  undertake. 
She  did  not  even  consult  her  husband's  guide-books 
enough  to  learn  the  least  thing  about  the  places  to  which 
she  was  going.     It  was  easier  to  have  him  tell  her ! 

Her  journey  abroad,  therefore,  failed  to  give  her  much 
information,  or  to  awaken  in  her  any  needs,  or  to  open  to 
her  any  resources  which  had  not  been  hers  before.  She 
was  a  capital  sailor,  and  greatly  enjoyed  the  steamer  going 
over.  Conversation  was  her  bliss,  and  **  there  were  so 
many  nice  people  to  talk  to !  "  as  she  wrote  her  mother. 
But  arrived  in  France,  Mr.  Calvert  was  constantly  out  on 
business,  and  could  take  her  sight-seeing  only  to  a  limited 
extent.  Ignorance  of  the  language,  of  the  money,  and  of 
the  customs,  made  her  timid  in  going  about  alone.  When 
she  first  got  to  Paris,  she  set  forth  as  a  matter  of  course 
one  morning, for  a  walk,  and  was  frightened  and  indignant 
at  the  insolence  with  which  she  was  stared  at  and  even 


ISO  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

accosted.  ''American  men"  she  wrote  to  a  friend,  ''al- 
ways take  a  woman  to  be  virtuous  unless  they  know  to  the 
contrary ;  but  Frenchmen — disgusting  creatures ! — are  ex- 
actly the  reverse."  So  this  unthrifty  traveller  spent  a 
large  part  of  her  time  solitary  in  her  room,  shivering  in 
the  grey,  chill,  dismal  city  that  Paris  often  is  in  winter, 
missing  her  New  York  comforts  and  the  bright  New  York 
sky,  and  wishing  for  some  one  to  speak  to. 

When  it  came  to  the  shopping,  however,  Calvert  out- 
did himself.  Julia  liked  lovely  things  as  well  as  any 
woman,  but  she  was  satisfied  with  enough,  and  she  would 
hear  the  shop-girls  exclaim  to  each  other  with  amazement 
because  "  Monsieur  wanted  Madame  to  have  this  and  that, 
and  she — inconceivable  /  refused.  So  generally  was  it  the 
other  way.  The  lady  wanted  and  the  husband  refused. 
But  American  husbands  were  quite  apart,  etc.,  etc." 

The  three  months  were  at  last  over,  and  Julia,  cat-like 
creature,  felt  an  unwonted  exhilaration  when  her  foot 
touched  the  deck  of  the  steamer  that  was  to  take  her  home. 
She  was  "glad  to  have  seen  Paris  and  the  other  places," 
as  she  expressed  it — for  those  were  the  days  when  Paris 
was  the  heaven  of  good  Americans,  and  London  only  a 
side  issue — "  but  New  York  was  good  enough  for  her  !  " 

Her  want  of  enthusiasm  and  her  discomfort  at  little 
things  had  much  damped  Calvert's  pleasure  in  bringing 
her.  "Ah  well !  "  he  said  to  himself  with  a  sigh,  "it's  no 
use !  "  and  he  remembered  a  certain  little  shop-maiden 
with  dark,  dove-like  eyes,  a  caressing  voice,  and  a  sub- 
missive manner  which  had  gone  straight  to  his  heart. 
"How  totally  different  from  American  women!"  he 
thought,  as  he  saw  her  hovering  about  his  wife  while  her 
dresses  and  wraps  were  being  tried  on,  kneeling  on  the 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  151 

ground  beside  her,  adjusting  here  and  pinning  there  so 
quietly,  so  dexterously,  and  looking  up  so  meekly  for  ap- 
proval or  direction.  He  found  her  very  pretty.  Her 
bust  and  arms  were  so  shapely,  her  forehead  so  low,  and  her 
eye-brows  so  delicately  pencilled  !  He  wondered  if  she 
would  be  in  that  establishment  when  he  went  back.  Julia 
had  arranged  that  her  future  dresses  should  be  made  there 
and  had  left  general  instructions  with  this  girl  as  being  the 
go-between  for  English  speaking  customers.  Yes,  of  course 
he  would  have  to  see  her  again.  He  would  like  to  hear 
her  pretty  broken  English  once  more.  Certainly,  he 
would  hear  it ! 

On  the  Cunarder  going  back,  Julia  found  herself  at  table 
next  a  striking-looking  man  of  about  thirty-five  who  at 
once  interested  himself  in  his  exquisitely  pretty  neighbor. 
In  the  course  of  a  day  or  two  she  learned  his  name,  and  also 
that  he  was  a  lawyer  from  Philadelphia,  and  a  widower. 
Beyond  that  her  delicacy  did  not  enquire,  perhaps  because 
she  was  entirely  happy  in  the  simple  fact  of  his  existence. 
That  he  was  of  good  family  and  high  in  his  profession  she 
could  not  doubt.  He  talked  charmingly  on  the  subjects 
with  which  she  was  most  conversant,  and  listened  even 
better — listened  with  an  air  almost  of  deference  that  was 
infinitely  flattering.  There  was  a  pensiveness  in  his  face 
that  might  mean  much  or  nothing,  but  which  to  Julia 
spoke  volumes.  Calvert  almost  instantly  observed  her 
interest  in  the  stranger,  and  as  instantly  grew  jealous — and 
not  without  reason,  for  as  devoted  as  a  man  could  be  to  a 
woman  who  has  a  husband  ever  at  her  elbow,  Julia's 
fellow-passenger  certainly  was. 

As  there  were  four  meals  a  day  on  the  steamer,  they  had 
at  least  four  opportunities  for  conversation,  and  Calvert 


152  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

was  often  inwardly  infuriated  to  notice  how  involuntarily 
their  voices  dropped  so  that  \he  could  not  possibly  take 
part  in  what  they  were  saying.  In  the  evening  he  could 
not  resist  cards,  but  Julia  always  declined  to  play,  and 
then  her  new  friend  would  sit  and  talk  with  her  either  on 
deck  or  in  the  cabin.  The  voyage  was  long,  for  the  winds 
were  contrary,  and  at  that  time  the  shortest  passage  was 
twelve  days ;  but  to  Julia  every  one  of  the  raw  and  chill 
fifteen  was  steeped  in  magic  whose  rosy  and  smiling  hours 
sped  each  more  swiftly  than  the  last. 

She  had  always  known  her  ideal  was  in  the  world ;  she 
had  always  felt  it, — and  now  here  he  was  !  Strong  as  was 
their  mutual  attraction,  she  did  not  attempt  to  flirt  and 
neither  did  he.  Julia  was  loyalty  and  chastity  itself,  a 
woman  incorruptible.  He  was  an  American  of  severe 
standards  who  did  not  admit  to  himself  the  possibility, 
even,  of  tampering  with  his  neighbor's  wife.  They  merely 
felt  that  immeasurable  content  in  each  other's  society  which 
would  seem  to  indicate  a  natural  union  if  anything  before- 
hand can,  and  they  took  every  opportunity  consistent  with 
dignity  and  propriety  of  being  together  that  they  could. 

Calvert  saw  it  all  and  writhed.  To  flirt  with  a  charming 
woman  one's  self  is  delicious,  but  to  see  one's  wife  evi- 
dently absorbed  in  another  man  is  agony  and  humiliation. 
When  the,  to  him,  interminable  voyage  ended,  and  they 
were  on  the  dock,  in  the  confusion  of  the  Custom-house 
Julia  feared  she  had  lost  her  Philadelphia  friend,  and  that 
she  should  not  see  him  again.  While  Calvert  was 
attending  to  the  revenue  officers,  she  sat  wan  and  des- 
olate in  the  carriage,  looking  wistfully  for  a  last  glimpse 
of  her  hero, — when  he  himself  ran  up. 

He  saw  the  misery  in  her  pale  face.     Some  of  it,  at 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  153 

least,  was  reflected  in  his  own.  But  how  could  a  man, 
successfully  pursuing  an  absorbing  profession  amid  the 
competition  of  his  peers,  and  about  him  all  the  pleasant 
distractions  of  the  high  social  world,  appreciate  what  was 
the  blank  of  existence  to  this  woman  who  felt  within  her- 
self special  gifts  for  such  a  world,  and  who  yet  was 
married  to  a  mere  New  York  clerk  ? 

He  took  her  little  hand, — ''  Good-bye,"  said  he,  "  and 
thank  you  for  the  never-to-be-forgotten  charm  of  our 
voyage  !  ' ' 

''You  really  go  on  at  once  to  Philadelphia?"  asked 
she,  almost  reproachfully. 

"To-night." 

''Not  very  complimentary  to  New  York  to  quit  us  so 
soon,"  returned  she,  smiling,  "I  was  in  hopes  you  might 
dine  with  us."  Julia  did  not  wish  to  be  tempted,  yet, 
woman-like,  was  unable  to  resist  throwing  out  an  almost 
imperceptible  lure. 

"  I  wish  I  were  not  obliged  to  hurry.  I  would  so  much 
like  to  have  seen  you  in  your  own  home ! — " 

They  gazed  silently  at  each  other.  "  Probably  we  shall 
not  meet  again,"  murmured  she,  involuntarily,  with  de- 
spairing eyes  and  an  irrepressible  quiver  of  her  lips. 

"I  think  for  me,  at  least,  it  would  be  best  not," 
returned  he,  gravely,  with  one  plunging  look  into  her 
soul. 

The  slender,  nervous  hand  for  one  instant  clung  wildly 
to  his  with  all  its  woman's  feeble  force,  then  released  him, 
and  lifting  his  hat,  in  a  moment  he  had  vanished  forever 
out  of  her  life. 

"If  my  husband  exists  in  this  world,"  said  Julia  to  her- 
self in  her  anguish,  "  that  is  he,  and  /  cannot  have  him  !'' 


154  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

— and  she  thought  bitterly  of  her  own  girlish  hesitation  at 
taking  Calvert,  and  how  if  teft  to  herself  she  never  would 
have  done  it. 

Amid  the  talk  and  excitement  of  arriving  home  after 
such  an  immense  event  as  in  those  days  and  in  that  circle 
was  a  trip  to  Europe,  Calvert  was  not  aware  of  any  change 
in  Julia.  But  when  all  the  the  new  purchases  had  been 
exhibited,  and  everything  about  their  adventures  had  been 
told  that  could  possibly  be  told  and  re- told  to  the  inter- 
ested family  ears,  the  jealous  husband  feared  or  fancied 
that  his  wife  was  no  longer  the  same.  She  certainly  was, 
for  her,  distinctly  quiet  and  distraite. 

In  this  softened  phase  she  was  strangely  charming,  and 
just  because  Calvert  felt  himself  most  miserably  doubting 
it,  he  began  to  hunger  violently  for  her  real  love,  fond- 
ness and  devotion.  It  seemed  to  him  he  wanted  Julia's 
very  self  as  he  had  never  wanted  it  before  \  but  she  was 
only  cool,  indifferent  and  weary-minded. 

His  advances  were  not  very  demonstrative  or  profuse. 
Really,  he  did  not  venture.  Hitherto  he  had  always  given 
so  much  love,  and  Julia  had  returned  at  best,  an  indulgent 
fondness,  rather  than  love.  Did  she  feel  now,  even  that 
for  him? 

One  evening,  about  three  weeks  after  their  return,  she 
was  sitting  silent  in  one  corner  of  the  sofa — sitting  on 
her  foot,  as  so  many  women  love  to  do — while  he  read  his 
newspaper  and  smoked.  The  house  was  perfectly  quiet, 
for  it  was  after  ten  o'clock — nearly  bed-time. 

Suddenly  he  put  down  paper  and  cigar,  and  coming 
over  to  her  he  nestled  himself  on  the  sofa  with  his  arms 
round  her  and  his  head  on  her  shoulder.  '  *  Do  you  love 
me,  Juley?"     he   murmured.     **I   love   you   so   much! 


NEW  YORK;  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  1 55 

You  look  so  sweet  sitting  here.  What  are  you  thinking 
about,  darling?     Kiss  me  !  " 

She  didn't  raise  her  arm  to  support  his  head,  nor  did  she 
lean  her  face  to  his.  **  Seems  to  me  you  are  very  affection- 
ate all  of  a  sudden!  "  returned  she,  looking  down  upon 
him  with  her  sweet,  proud  smile. 

*'  Not  '  all  of  a  sudden  '  at  all !  I'm  always  affectionate 
— at  least,  I'd  like  to  be,  as  you  know  well  enough.  It's 
you  who  are  the  cool  hand." 

*'01d  married  people  like  us  oughtn't  to  be  silly?" 
said  Julia,  offishly. 

''Put  your  arm  under  my  head,  dear,  won't  you,  and 
kiss  me?  Love  me  a  little,  Julia.  I'm  so  tired  to-night, 
and  I  do  feel  so  blue,  too  !  My  little  wife — my  little 
Julia — I'm  so  glad  to  be  back  in  our  pretty  home 
alone  with  you  !  "  He  kissed  her  mouth,  then  closed  his 
eyes  and  rested  on  her  bosom.  For  a  little  while  she  laid 
her  cheek  to  his,  once  or  twice  touched  brow  and  lids  with 
her  lips,  then  nothing  more. 

Men  never  forget  their  mothers,  and  he  wanted  to  be 
petted,  to  be  babied,  to  be  called  the  dear,  caressing  things 
that  are  so  deadly  silly  to  every  ear  but  those  that  hear 
them  ! 

But  his  wife  was  so  motionless  that  at  last  he  opened  his 
eyes.  Hers  were  not  bent  upon  him  ;  they  were  fixed  ab- 
sently across  the  room.  Evidently,  too  evidently,  her 
thoughts  were  not  with  the  husband  on  her  heart,  but  with 
some  far,  far  away  interest.  ''Well,  I  declare!"  ex- 
claimed Calvert  briskly,  and  springing  up — "  I  was  almost 
asleep!  I  must  go  to  bed.  Good  night!  "  and  he  left 
her  sitting  there. 

When  he  got  to  his  room  he  muttered  :  "  It's  that  damned 


156  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Philadelphian  !  ' '  and  from  that  hour  Frank  Calvert  ad- 
dressed himself  without  remorse  to  that  still  hunt  for 
woman's  love  and  self-surrender  which  is  the  deep  under- 
current of  so  many  men's  lives — which,  though  not  its 
ostensible  is  yet  its  dearest  purpose,  and  which  such  men 
as  Calvert  will  attain,  be  sacrificed  to  it  what  must ! 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

NUMBER    THREE. 

After  her  second  daughter's  marriage,  Mrs.  Dexter' s 
maternal  solicitude  very  naturally  concentrated  itself  upon 
her  third  and  last,  Josephine.  But  Josephine  was  four 
years  younger  than  Fanny — only  fourteen,  therefore,  and 
there  was  really  not  much  occasion  for  haste.  Judging 
from  her  successes  with  her  first  two,  it  was  almost  a  mat- 
ter of  course  that  the  third  would  do  well — would  perhaps 
marry  as  much  better  than  Fanny  as  Fanny  had  than  Julia. 
The  devoted  mother  was  really  entitled  to  a  little  vacation 
from  the  peculiar  cares  of  managing  mamma-hood,  and 
she  took  it.  Josephine,  who  had  scarcely  been  to  school 
five  quarters  in  her  life,  who  knew  absolutely  nothing,  and 
whose  very  spelling  was  on  a  par  with  that  of  servant-girls, 
was  allowed  to  lounge  away  two  more  of  girlhood's  price- 
less years.  By  the  time  she  was  sixteen,  a  cousin  of  Mr. 
Dexter' s  had  made  a  success  of  a  young  ladies'  boarding- 
school  in  the  flourishing  city  of  Cleveland,  and  no  other 
plan  suggesting  itself,  the  principal  of  this  institution,  as 
being  a  relative,  was  cajoled  by  Mrs.  Dexter  into  one  of 
those  *' something  for  nothing"  arrangements  which  she 
invariably  attempted  in  every  bargain  of  her  life.  Her 
youngest,  though  not  her  fondest  hope — for  no  one  ever 
supplanted  Julia  in  her  mother's  heart^was  thither  exiled 
until   she  was  eighteen ;    the  impression   that  there  were 


158  NEW  YORK:  A   SVMPHONrC  STUDY. 

rich  people  in  Cleveland,  and  that  consequently  fate 
might  be  holding  some  yoiing  heir  in  reserve  there  for 
a  pretty  New  England  charmer,  going  for  much  in  the 
decision. 

I  have  said  how  Mrs.  Dexter  enjoyed  finding  herself 
domiciled  at  the  Howe's  the  first  winter  after  Fanny's  mar- 
riage, and  this  intermezzo  of  Josephine's  nonage  was  no 
doubt  the  happiest  period  of  her  life — its  veritable  Indian 
summer.  How  she  loved  the  large,  composite,  com- 
panionable roar  of  the  big  city  as  she  heard  it  anew  every 
autumn  when  she  came  down  !  The  thrilling  fire-bells 
at  night,  the  lumbering  ice  carts  at  two  or  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  the  lively  rattle  of  the  milkmen  and  their 
shrill  calls  at  five  or  six,  the  street  cries,  the  hand  organs, 
the  distant  metallic  slither, — every  city  sound  or  sight  was 
dear  and  grateful  to  her.  During  her  eight  months  visit, 
she  alternated  between  Fanny's  and  Julia's  houses,  staying 
with  the  former,  but  of  course  continually  spending  whole 
days  and  nights  with  the  latter. 

Naturally  busy,  she  continued  her  motherly  and  grand- 
motherly offices  of  mending,  and  when  a  seamstress  was  to 
the  fore,  of  making  for  her  offspring.  She  was  always 
ready  to  do  an  errand,  to  beat  up  a  cake,  to  fill  up  any 
housekeeping  gap,  to  take  a  hand  at  cards,  to  receive  an 
inopportune  caller,  to  flatter  her  sons-in-law.  On  Sun- 
days she  was  invariable  in  her  attendance  in  Mr.  Howe's 
pew,  though  always,  as  in  Belmont,  a  little  late,  and  with 
the  same  air  appropriate  to  the  occasion  that  was  the  last 
finishing  touch  of  her  Sunday  toilette,  and  as  she  listened 
to  the  deep  seething  organ- tones  that  rolled  and  pervaded 
both  the  building  and  her  soul — that  soul  really  seemed  to 
rise  on  wings  of  ecstasy  toward  a  Better  World  ! 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  159 

It  was  at  this  period  that  she  improvised  for  herself  the 
original  and  peculiar  amusement  of  occasionally  penetrat- 
ing the  sacred  adyta  of  the  New  York  aristocracy.  She 
would  call  at  some  well-known  though  not  too-croesus 
door  and  send  up  her  card,  glance  eagerly  about  in  the 
absence  of  the  servant,  and  when  the  mistress  of  the  house 
appeared — looking  surprised  at  the  stranger,  or  if  the  ser- 
vant returned  to  ask  if  there  were  not  some  mistake,  as 
the  lady  ''did  not  remember  any  such  name" — Mrs. 
Dexter  would  rise  in  apparent  confusion,  explain  that  she 
was  a  stranger  from  Philadelphia  or  Boston  and  in  looking 
out  a  friend's  similar  name  in  the  directory  "must  have 
mistaken  the  initials-a-h  " — then,  with  apologies  as  nearly 
in  the  manner  of  a  grande  daitie  as  she  could  command,  she 
would  sail  self-possessedly  out  into  the  street.  When  she 
returned  to  Belmont  in  the  summer  she  would  casually  men- 
tion to  her  village  callers,  points  in  the  'V/-egant  drawing- 
rooms  "  of  her  friends  "  Mrs.  Cruger  "  or  "  Mrs.  Fearing" 
— "  Mrs.  Duncan  "  or  "  Mrs.  Sydney  Mason-a-h  !  " 

Or  she  would  observe  when  the  funeral  of  any  social 
notability  was  announced  as  "at  the  house,"  dress  herself 
in  appropriate  black  with  concerned  countenance  to  match, 
and  repair  thither  at  the  appointed  hour  among  the  other 
friends.  Of  course  at  such  a  time  she  would  be  admitted 
without  question,  and  she  then  experienced  the  really  ser- 
aphic pleasure  of  sitting  silently  in  a  circle  of  undoubted 
fashionables,  and  noting  everything  she  could  about  them 
or  the  house  itself. 

In  summer  she  still  indulged  Mr.  Dexter  with  his  own 
home,  though  had  it  not  been  that  her  daughters  were  ex- 
tremely fond  of  Belmont  and  of  the  neighboring  Belmont 
Springs,  the  poor  man  would  long  since  have  ceased  to 


l6o  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

have  even  that  much  vouchsafed  him.  On  her  first  vaca- 
tion Josephine  brought  one  of  her  cousin's  daughters  back 
with  her,  and  the  young  lady  was  equally  amused  and  an- 
noyed at  Mrs.  Dexter' s  extremes  of  economy  and  at  her 
extravagance  of  pretension. 

She  came  to  stay  a  month,  but  her  vigorous  Western 
appetite  retreated  at  the  end  of  a  fortnight,  literally  starved 
out.  She  rarely  had  a  sufficient  meal.  Everything  was 
deliciously  cooked,  meats  and  vegetables  done  to  a  turn 
and  daintily  served,  the  pastry  delicate  and  flaky  as  fairy- 
work — but  there  was  so  little  of  it ! 

**  Mr.  Dexter  !  "  Mrs.  Dexter  would  call  out,  reproach- 
fully, *'why  don't  you  help  Kate  to  another  piece  of 
steak  ?     You  are  starving  the  child  !  ' ' 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  Mr.  Dexter  would  courteously 
reply,  holding  the  carving-knife  and  fork  over  the  bone 
and  coarser  remnants  on  the  dish,  and  making  a  feint  to 
find  something — *'  will  you  have  another  bit  ?  " 

**  No,  thank  you,"  cousin  Kate  would  answer,  '*you 
helped  me  very  liberally,"  and  would  then  go  on  filling 
up  the  vacancies  with  potato  or  bread  and  butter. 

Mrs.  Dexter  kept  her  usual  one  cheap  servant,  and  Kate 
knew  it  perfectly  well,  and  her  hostess  knew  that  she  knew 
it;  yet  would  she  go  to  the  head  of  the  stairs  and  call — 
*'Brid-get! — Ma-ry  ! — El-len  !  "  and  returning  to  the 
room  would  say  in  apparent  disgust — *'Well!  what  can 
those  girls  be  doing  ?  I  must  go  down  and  see  after  them 
myself.  Servants  are  such  plagues  I  " — and  then  she 
would  disappear  for  two  or  three  hours  on  hospitable  {i.e. 
culinary)  cares  intent.  But  she  never  gave  the  least  hint 
that  the  waitress  at  the  table  was  the  cook  and  the  laun- 
dress as  well — was  other  than  the  waitress  alone.     In  fact. 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  i6i 

to  her,  for  the  moment,  the  maid  7vas  nothing  but  the 
waitress.  She  always  felt  herself  the  fine-lady  mistress  of 
three  servants  at  least,  and  before  a  stranger  it  was  easier 
to  carry  out  the  illusion  than  admit  the  truth.  She  rose 
at  five  in  the  morning  to  make  her  pies  and  cake,  and  at 
half- past  eight  would  come  languidly  into  the  breakfast- 
room  in  a  white  morning  dress  and  dainty  cap,  as  if  at 
that  late  hour  she  were  only  unwillingly  up  and  were  half- 
asleep  yet !  In  fact,  Mrs.  Dexter  lived  literally  in  a  world 
of  her  own  creating,  as  I  once  knew  two  little  girls  of  five 
and  eight  for  a  whole  year  forget  their  own  individuality 
and  the  realities  of  life  in  a  mimic  realm  peopled  exclu- 
sively by  their  dolls  ! 

The  mother's  matrimonial  prescience  in  sending  Jo- 
sephine westward  to  school,  was,  as  usual,  justified ;  for 
when  the  young  lady  came  home  for  her  first  summer  va- 
cation, she  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  *'  George  Mc- 
Cloud,"  and  when  she  returned  at  the  end  of  the  two  stip- 
ulated years,  George  McCloud  was  her  escort,  and  the 
admission  of  an  engagement  between  them  was  immediate. 
The  youth  was  the  son  of  a  General  McCloud  who  had 
won  some  distinction  in  the  Mexican  War  and  was  now 
developing  distant  iron  interests  with  a  residence  in  Cleve- 
land as  a  base.  Unluckily,  the  ardent  lover  was  but  a 
year  or  two  older  than  his  fiancee.  Worse  yet,  he  was 
still  entirely  dependent  on  his  father ;  so  there  was  noth- 
ing for  them  but  to  wait  three  years  at  least — and  between 
two  people  who  have  no  motive  whatever  for  falling  in 
love  excepting  youth  and  good  looks,  long  engagements 
offer  endless  chances  for  short  breakings-off. 

Josephine  Dexter  was  as  different  from  her  sisters  as 
they   were    from  each  other.     She  was  much  taller  than 


1 62  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

either,  and  her  phenomenal  indolence  had  rounded  her 
shoulders ;  but  as  it  was  in  the  Dexter  blood  to  carry  off 
any  defect  whatever  without  detriment  to  the  general 
effect,  so  this  one  of  the  fair  Josie  was  not  minded  by  her 
admirers  any  more  than  was  the  decided  cast  in  one  of  her 
dark  eyes. 

She  had  a  pretty  bust-contour  and  yet  was  slender  and 
willowy  as  a  sylph.  Her  head  and  features  and  face  were 
excessively  small,  and  the  latter,  as  it  were,  pointed.  Her 
hair  was  raven  black,  her  eyes  dark  brown,  with  black  curl- 
ing lashes,  her  coloring  brunette,  with  red  cheeks  and 
scarlet  lips.  Like  her  sister  Julia,  her  eyelids  were  habit- 
ually drooping,  so  that  one  scarcely  noticed  the  cast,  and 
the  curling  lashes  on  her  cheek  were  one  of  her  fascinations. 
Her  whole  effect  was  fluid  and  serpentine  to  the  last 
degree ;  but  it  was  a  harmless  serpentineness,  for  she  was 
perfectly  ignorant,  perfectly  inert,  and  withal  embodied 
music  from  the  hairs  of  her  head  to  the  tips  of  her  long 
and  sinuous  fingers. 

How  should  Mrs.  Dexter,  sordid,  scheming  woman,  and 
in  almost  music-barren  Belmont,  have  been  the  mother  of 
a  genuine  musical  genius  ?  What  mystic  influence  could 
have  played  upon  her  ere  the  child  was  born,  and  made 
this  one  chord  out  of  the  thousands  latent  in  her  as  in  us 
all,  vibrate  throughout  her  offspring's  being? 

My  own  explanation  is  that  poor  Mrs.  Dexter  was  in 
reality  an  artist,  that  is,  a  person  born  to  receive  and  to 
give  Joy  through  Beauty — but  in  this  case  born  and  buried  in 
that  frequent  cellar  of  narrow  toil  and  stagnant  dullness — 
a  country  village.  Consequently,  all  her  moral  twistings 
and  convolutions  were  after  all  but  the  desperate  efforts 
which  a  vigorous  plant  in  a  cellar  will  inevitably  make  to 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  1 63 

reach  the  far-distant  light  which  is  its  life.  The  grace 
and  harmony,  the  charm  and  adaptibility,  of  her  children, 
in  spite  of  their  absolute  negations  in  mental  or  moral 
education — the  costume  and  social  virtuosi,  so  to  speak, 
that  they  all  were,  were  evidences  of  the  baffled  artistic 
strain  in  their  mother's  blood — France  uprising  against 
England — Pleasure  avenging  itself  on  Puritanism.  Like 
begets  like,  and  from  an  artist  an  artist  should  come  if 
contrary  influences  do  not  prevent.  Mrs.  Dexter  herself 
had  a  voice  and  an  excellent  ear,  and  always  sang  loudly 
in  church.  Some  chance  visitor  in  Belmont — some  young 
girl  home  from  school  with  a  few  show-pieces,  may  have 
furnished  the  magic  force  that  crystallized  into  her  music- 
child. 

Be  it  all  as  it  may,  the  fact  remains  that  at  five  years  old 
the  little  Josephine  Dexter  caught  and  reproduced  after 
one  hearing,  the  airs  of  the  difficult  Thalberg  and  De 
Meyer  transcriptions  played  by  her  rector's  wife — the 
highly  musical  Mrs.  Gardner. 

The  latter  was  startled  by  so  wonderful  an  ear,  and 
begged  the  child's  mother  to  have  her  taught  at  once,  or 
she  would  never  learn  to  read  music.  But  eight  or  ten 
dollars  a  quarter  for  lessons  to  a  baby  of  five  years  old  was 
not  to  be  thought  of,  even  were  the  gift  as  priceless  as 
Mrs.  Gardner  maintained.  It  is  true  that  Tim's  legacy 
was  at  that  moment  being  drawn  upon  for  Julia's  first 
New  York  outfit,  but  no  thought  of  its  possibilities  for 
Josephine  crossed  the  mother's  straitened  mind. 

The  little  Josephine,  therefore,  being  as  lazy  as  she  was 
gifted,  was  allowed  to  grow  to  her  eleventh  year  before 
any  attempt  was  made  to  teach  her  the  notes.  Of  course, 
unless  aided  by  great  earnestness  in   the  pupil,  or  great 


j>' 


164  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

severity  or  perseverance  in  the  teacher,  the  attempt  by 
that  time  was  hopeless,  and  of  the  two  latter  Mrs.  Dexter 
would  neither  have  allowed  the  one  nor  paid  for  the  other. 
And  so  the  rare  jewel  that  nature  had  flung  to  the  world 
was  lost.  At  fourteen,  Josephine  Dexter,  never  having 
been  out  of  Belmont  nor  heard  any  music  but  the  playing 
of  Mrs.  Gardner  and  her  daughter,  would  sit,  her  lashes 
on  her  cheeks,  dreaming  over  the  piano  with  so  exquisitely 
musical  a  touch,  and  with  such  delicate  and  melancholy 
little  fancies  streaming  from  her  fingers,  as  would  have 
brought  tears  to  the  eyes  of  a  connoisseur.  The  girl,  like 
Mrs.  Gardner  herself,  might  have  enchanted  the  world  as 
an  artist,  and,  again  like  her,  might  have  vindicated  the 
feminine  possibilities  for  musical  composition,  if  only  she 
had  been  taught.  Ah,  on  how  many  myriads  of  graves 
might  this  epitaph — "  Had  she  only'' — be  inscribed  ! 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

A    BROKEN    ENGAGEMENT. 

In  his  two  or  three  summer  visits  to  the  Dexter  man- 
sion, the  young  McCloud  found  himself  as  happy  as  the 
men  that  knew  it  not  too  well,  invariably  were.  Mrs. 
Howe  was  always  there,  and  as  we  have  seen,  she  and  Jo- 
sephine and  her  mother  understood  well  how  to  strew  the 
flowers  of  life  to  their  admirers  and  to  get  far  more  strewn 
in  return.  Money  seemed  to  be  more  plenty  with  the 
westerner  than  it  had  been  even  with  the  generous  Howe. 
On  one  visit  he  took  the  party  on  the  charming  trip  to 
Montreal  and  Quebec.  On  the  next  he  found  himself 
paying  all  their  expenses  to  Saratoga.  The  visits  were 
not  long,  to  be  sure,  but  the  bills  were — markedly  so  ! 

In  company,  Josephine  Dexter  had  neither  the  anima- 
tion, the  cleverness,  nor  the  sunny  sweetness  of  her  sisters. 
Her  attraction  was  rather  in  her  repose,  for  she  said  very 
little — her  extreme  ignorance  and  her  extreme  indolence 
giving  her,  indeed,  very  little  to  say.  She  had  a  little 
turn-down  mouth  like  Patti's,  which,  together  with  the 
great  refinement  of  her  features  and  her  usual  quiet,  gave 
her  an  air  of  melancholy  and  sentiment.  Her  quick  ear 
caught  every  peculiarity  of  pronunciation  that  she  thought 
fashionable  or  elegant,  so  that  her  speech  was  the  oddest 
jumble  imaginable  of  Boston  and  New  York  and  Brooklyn 
accents.     Her  gait  was  adapted  from  that  of  one  striking 


1 66  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

girl  she  knew — her  laugh  and  her  voice  imitated  from  an- 
other. In  short,  externally  she  was  a  chaos  of  affectations 
and  internally  a  mass  of  passive,  as  her  sister  Fanny  was 
of  active,  selfishness.  In  one  thing  only,  besides  music, 
was  she  quick — in  one  thing  was  she  lightning — in  dealing 
cards.  With  Mrs.  Dexter  and  her  two  youngest  daughters, 
cards  were  a  passion.  To  while  away  the  dull  Belmont 
evenings  Josephine  had  been  pressed  into  the  service  from 
her  earliest  childhood,  and  her  mind  being  unoccupied  by 
anything  else,  it  was  no  wonder  that  the  card-spirit  took 
full  possession  and  dwelt  there. 

The  young  lady  was  looking  forward  to  her  marriage  at 
twenty-one — for  by  that  time  her  lover  would  be  twenty- 
three,  when  one  day  an  agitated  letter  came  from  the  lat- 
ter announcing  his  father's  failure  in  business.  Besides  the 
story  of  their  misfortunes,  it  was  full  of  protestations  of  his 
own  deathless  fidelity  to  his  darling  Josephine — only  they 
could  not  now  be  married  in  six  months  as  they  had  in- 
tended. Would  she — could  she — wait  for  him — be  true 
to  him,  as  he  was  so,  so  true  to  her  ?  Oh,  yes  !  He  could 
not  doubt  it.  He  judged  her  heart  by  his  own.  Should 
anything  have  happened  to  her  he  would  but  love  her 
better,  cherish  her  dearer — and  how  could  she  feel  other- 
wise toward  him  ?  The  firm  had  lost  everything  but  honor, 
but  they  had  many  friends,  and  as  soon  as  possible  they 
were  going  on  again.  He  confessed  it — he  had  not  him- 
self been  as  earnest,  as  strenuous  in  his  business  as,  with 
such  a  prize  as  his  Josephine  committed  to  him,  he  should 
have  been.  He  had  taken  too  much  for  granted  that 
things  were  all  right.  But  now  he  should  work  as  never 
man  did,  and  he  should  be  so  happy  in  his  work, 
because  it  would  be  for  her,  etc.,  etc.     She  must  write 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  167 

soon,  if  but  one  line — to  reassure  ''her  own  and  ever 
devoted —  George. ' ' 

Mrs.  Baxter's  cold  eye  glinted  cold  steel  as  the  weeping 
Josephine  rehearsed  to  her  the  letter.  "  That's  just  like  a 
man  !  "  she  snapped  out,  in  infinite  contempt.  *' '  Should 
anything  happen  to  you  he  would  love  you  better,  cherish 
you  dearer,' — and — 'how  could  you  feel  otherwise  toward 
him  ?  ' — If  you  should  lose  your  beauty  he  would  *  love  you 
better,'  eh?  *  Cherish  you  dearer,' — would  he?  I  wouldn't 
trust  him,  no,  indeed  !  nor  any  other  man.  He  pays  his 
money  and  he  takes  his  choice,  but  if  he  don't  pay,  he 
don't  take,  neither!  That's  about  the  sense  of  it,  Jo- 
sephine, my  dear,  and  of  course  you'll  have  to  break  off 
the  engagement." 

''Oh,  mother!  " 

"  Now,  Josephine,  do  you  think  you  can  wait  three 
or  four  years — sacrifice  all  that  youth  and  be  on  your 
father's  hands  all  that  extra  time,  on  the  chance  that 
at  the  end  of  it  George  McCloud  will  be  able  to  marry 
and  live  in  the  style  you  expected  when  you  accepted 
him?    Nonsense!" 

<*  He'll  think  I  only  accepted  him  for  his  money,  and  I 
did  like  him  so  much.  Poor  George  !  " — and  her  hand- 
kerchief really  became  quite  drenched. 

"Never  mind  what  he  thinks!  Poor  men  mustn't 
have  thoughts ;  ' '  said  Mrs.  Dexter,  chuckling  at  her  own 
cleverness.  "  He  and  his  father  must  be  a  stupid  pair  be- 
tween 'em  to  fail !  I  can't  imagine  men  being  such  id- 
jots  as  to  fail!  Why  a  man  can't  keep  his  money  after 
he's  once  got  it,  I  don't  see.     Ridik'lus !  " 

"  Poor  George  !  "  reiterated  Josephine,  dismally. 

"Poor  you!   I  should  say,  Jo,"  retorted  Mrs.  Dexter. 


1 68  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

''  At  your  age  Fanny  and  Julia  had  been  married  for 
years,  and  now  you  are  flung  all  back  on  the  world  again." 

' '  Must  I  really  break  off  my  engagement  with  him  ?  ' ' 

*'  '  Must  you  ?  '  "  echoed  her  mother.  '<  Of  course  you 
must.  Of  course  you  needn't  say  so  in  so  many  words — 
or  rather,  father  must  write  for  you  and  say  that  under  the 
circumstances  he  and  I  are  not  willing  the  engagement 
should  be  unconditional.  When  George  gets  ready 
to  marry,  the  correspondence  can  be  renewed  if  both 
wish  it." 

*'  I  suppose  I  must,"  said  Josephine;  and  she  went  and 
lay  down  on  her  bed  and  cried  over  her  altered  prospects 
for  a  long  time.  Mrs.  Dexter  let  her  cry  without  attempt- 
ing to  comfort  her.  She  thought  she  might  as  well  have 
it  out  at  once.  Finally  a  new  thought  occurred  to  the 
girl  and  she  rose  and  came  back  to  her  mother. 

**  Since  I've  got  to  break  off  with  George,  mother,  I 
suppose  I  shall  have  to  send  back  his  presents.  My  poor 
engagement  ring !  Such  a  pretty  one  !  ' '  and  she  held  up 
her  hand  and  made  the  fine  brilliant  sparkle  in  the  light. 

In  the  interim  Mrs.  Dexter' s  own  meditations  had  been 
occupied  with  this  very  subject.  ''N-no,"  said  she, 
doubtfully.  '*I  don't  think  you'd  better  send  back  his 
presents.  That  would  hurt  his  feelings — make  him  feel 
cheap,  I'm  afraid.  And  it  would  look  as  if  you  were 
breaking  off  the  engagement  for  good  and  all,  when  of 
course,  if  the  firm  gets  all  right  again,  as  I  hope  it  may — 
why,  the  affair  might  be  renewed." 

*'But,  mother,"  persisted  Josephine,  ''of  course  I'm 
either  engaged  to  George  or  I'm  not.  If  not,  I  7tiust 
send  back  his  ring,  for  if  I  keep  it  he  will  take  for 
granted  I  still  feel  bound  to  him." 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  169 

Now,  one  of  Mrs.  Dexter' s  secret  ambitions  she  never 
yet  had  compassed ;  nor,  in  truth,  had  she  much  expected 
ever  to  do  so.  She  had  accomplished  a' velvet  cloak, — 
though  it  had  always  had  a  half-look  as  if  it  might  have 
been  bought  second-hand, — and  also  a  mink  cape  such  as 
all  well-to-do  women  wore  then  as  later  they  wore  seal- 
skin jackets;  only  the  mink  was  very  light  and  faded 
instead  of  fashionably  dark  and  rich  in  color.  But  a 
diamond  ring — a  real  brilliant — had  ever  seemed  to  her 
hopeless.  Now,  however,  a  sudden  ray  of  light,  as  from 
the  wished-for  gem  itself,  illumined  this  dark  recess  of  her 
fate.     Nay,  she  saw  the  diamond  on  her  finger ! 

So  she  said:  ''Well,  dear,  I  suppose  you  are  right 
about  it.  The  ring  ought  certainly  to  go  back.  But 
there  is  no  hurry.  There's  no  need  of  hastening  matters. 
In  fact,  I  think  George  will  probably  want  you  to  keep  it 
to  remember  him  by,"  and  Mrs.  Dexter  laughed.  ''I'm 
sure  /should  want  to  be  remembered  by  my  first  love  if  I 
was  a  young  man  !  ' ' 

''  If  the  engagement  is  broken  off,  of  course  everybody 
will  know,  and  how  could  I  then  wear  the  ring  ? ' ' 

'*  You  needn't  wear  it  here.  Put  it  in  your  drawer.  In 
fact,  perhaps  I'll  buy  it  of  Mr.  McCloud  for  myself. 
Probably  he  wouldn't  want  much  for  it." 

"Why,  mother! — what — an — i-dea  !  "  said  Josephine, 
scandalized. 

''You  goosey!  You  thought  I  was  in  earnest,"  said 
Mrs.  Dexter,  laughing  again.      "  I'm  only  joking." 

But  she  was  not  joking.  Mr.  Dexter  wrote  the  hollow 
letter  dictated  by  his  wife,  and  Mr.  McCloud,  and  still 
more  the  chivalrous  gentleman,  his  father,  were  furious 
enough  as  they  read  it.      "Think  of  it,  sir!  "  said  the 


[if,  170  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

outraged  lover.  ' '  Not  one  word  from  Josephine  and  only 
this  icy  thing  from  her  old  fox;  of  a  father  !  " 

*'  Why — they're  adventuresses — that  girl  and  her  moth- 
er— my  boy  !  I  never  heard  anything  more  bare-faced  in 
my  life.  It's  evident  she  accepted  you  simply  because  she 
thought  you  had  money.  You've  had  a  lucky  escape.  I 
don't  know  but  to  you,  it's  worth  the  failure  !  I  confess 
I  always  was  disgusted  with  the  way  they  made  you  shell 
out  for  them." 

''I  did  spend  a  lot  on  them  all — there's  no  mistake 
about  that !  "  said  young  George,  with  a  sigh.  "■  Wish  I 
had  some  of  it  now  !  " 

George  was  very  young.  At  best  his  heart  was  not  very 
deep,  and  after  a  few  weeks  he  was  hating  all  the  Dexters 
more  than  he  had  ever  loved  them.  Having  arrived  at 
this  state  of  mind  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Dexter  expressing  sur- 
.  prise  that  his  engagement  ring  had  not  been  returned  when 
himself  had  been  turned  adrift. 

''What  are  you  thinking  of,  Libby?"  queried  Mr. 
Dexter,  angrily,  ''not  to  have  returned  that  ring?  It 
ought  to  have  gone  back  long  ago." 

"  Laws  ! — I  didn't  suppose  he  would  think  of  it  again  ! 
A  gift's  a  gift,  and  I  should  think  a  man  would  be  ashamed 
to  ask  a  girl  for  a  thing  he  had  once  given  her.  Shows  he 
was  mean  at  heart — doesn't  it?  He  was  small  loss,  I 
guess.  You  needn't  mind,  Mr.  Dexter.  I'll  write  to  him 
myself." 

George  McCloud  was  accordingly  stupefied  at  receiving 
the  following  communication  : 

My  Dear  Mr  McCloul) — 

Your,  note  to  Mr.  Dexter  is  at  hand  and  I  am  very  much  surprised 
and  mortifide  that  when  he  wrote  he  should  have  forgotten  to  tell  you 


NEW  YORK;   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  171 

about  your  beautifull  engagement  ring  you  remember  your  promise  of  a 
subscription  of  ^150.00  to  our  new  church  and  thinking  you  would 
of  coiu^e  want  that  promise  kept  as  I  had  told  the  building  com- 
mittee of  your  intention  and  they  had  counted  on  it  in  their  estamates 
I  decided  to  pay  the  ^150.00  myself  and  keep  the  ring  as  an  equiva- 
lunt  though  no  doubt  less  than  you  paid  for  it  it  is  as  much  as  you  could 
get  for  it  in  any  other  way  if  not  more  hoping  this  disposal  of  it  may 
be  satasfactory  to  you  and  with  my  and  Josephine's  best  wishes  for  your 
happiness  and  prosperrity 

I  am  yours  sincerely 

Elizabeth  G.  Dexter. 

Mr.  McCloud  had  never  *' promised"  $150.00  to  the 
new  church  at  all !  Mrs.  Dexter  had  once  laughingly 
asked  him  if  he  did  not  want  to  subscribe  that  sum  to  the 
church  Mr.  Gardner  and  his  congregation  were  building, 
and  he  had  replied,  as  laughingly,  that  he  would  see  about 
it  when  his  ''ship  came  in." 

Needless  to  say  that  Mrs.  Dexter  never  paid  one  penny 
into  the  church  treasury ;  but  there  was  the  diamond — 
glittering  on  her  finger  to  the  end  of  her  days ;  and  for 
the  lie  and  the  theft,  why — the  lady  was  as  unconscious  of 
either  as  the  babe  unborn ! 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE    SHOPPER    ABROAD. 

The  year  was  not  out  after  Julia  Calvert's  return  from 
Europe  when  she  was  again  a  mother.  Even  before  the 
little  one  came,  she  welcomed,  instead  of  dreading  it,  for 
an  imperative  craving  for  something  to  love  better  than 
she  loved  herself,  had  at  last  been  born  within  her. 

And  this  baby  was  indeed  worth  loving ;  nay,  no  mother 
could  have  held  it  in  her  arms  and  felt  that  its  life  had 
come  from  hers,  without  adoring  it,  rapturously,  desper- 
ately. The  little  creature  was  perfectly  exquisite — Julia's 
express  image,  and  yet  with  an  indescribable  sensibility, 
sweetness  and  responsiveness  about  it  that  won  every  heart 
and  hinted  at  the  infinite  broodings  of  the  mother's  spirit 
while  it  was  evolving  within  her.  Julia  named  it  *'  Flora," 
the  fairy  thing  looked  so  like  a  flower,  and  the  whole  force 
and  wealth  of  her  nature  streamed  forth  and  wrapped  itself 
round  and  round  the  child  like  a  garment.  She  felt  it 
was  her  child,  her  very  own,  and  that  the  alien  Calvert 
nature  had  no  part  nor  lot  in  it.  She  loved  to  tease  her 
husband  by  saying:  "Frank,  you  had  nothing  to  do 
with  getting  up  this  baby.  Clara's  jj^^wr  child  !"  As  she 
had  wakened  to  realizing  what  it  might  have  been  to  be  a 
wife,  so  now  she  knew  what  it  was  to  be  a  mother.  For 
the  first  time  in  her  life  she  was  radiantly  happy,  and 
Mrs.  Dexter  was  more  beatific  over  her  than  ever. 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  173 

Mrs.  Fanny,  too,  continued  to  be  an  increasing  credit 
to  the  maternal  pride.  After  Julia's  foreign  trip  that  lit- 
tle personage  was  decidedly  restless  until  Mr.  Howe  prom- 
ised to  take  her  across  the  water  as  well.  It  must  be  con- 
fessed that  he  did  not  feel  much  like  doing  it.  His 
family  expenses  were  large,  and  a  journey  abroad  with  a 
wife  so  fond  of  dress  and  pleasure  as  his  own,  would  not 
be  a  financial  bagatelle.  Still,  he  decided  he  could  stretch 
a  point  and  afford  it,  especially  as  he  had  a  strong  aesthetic 
hankering  hirnself  to  see  the  other  side,  and  as  in  his 
twenty  years  of  business  devotion  he  had  never  taken  more 
than  an  annual  two  weeks  vacation. 

Mrs.  Dexter,  therefore,  with  an  ever-swelling  sense  of 
the  family  importance  and  prestige,  was  able  to  announce 
in  Belmont  that  on  Mr.  Calvert's  fifth  crossing,  the 
Howes  were  to  accompany  him, — their  plan  being  to  ''do 
Europe"  in  three  months  so  as  to  return  also  with  him. 
Calvert  was  as  much  interested  to  give  the  pair  the  benefit 
of  his  foreign  knowledge  and  experience  as  they  were  to 
receive  them,  and  as  a  traveller,  the  wide-awake  Fanny 
was  certainly  a  refreshing  contrast  to  the  inert  and  dreamy 
Julia.  Mr.  Howe  cast  an  intelligent  glance  at  the  cathe- 
drals and  monuments  and  galleries,  and  Fanny  a  compre- 
hensive one  at  the  shops  and  the  people,  and  both  were 
equally  impressed  and  satisfied  with  what  their  journey 
conferred. 

As  leading  towns  in  Europe  so  often  have  their  manu- 
facturing specialties,  in  nearly  every  place  they  came  to, 
Fanny  saw  something  she  ardently  wanted  to  buy — with 
the  result  that  her  violent  yearnings  over  various  ''  finds" 
that  took  her  fancy,  caused  the  Howes  to  fall  somewhat 
behind  their  time-table,  so  that  instead  of  giving  to  Rome 


174  .V£IV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  week  they  had  intended,  they  were  obliged  to  limit 
their  stay  in  the  historic  cosmcte  to  two  days. 

Heavens  and  earth  !  of  these  two  precious  days  they 
found  the  first  was  a  **  festa,"  and  all  the  shops  and  gal- 
leries were  shut !  What  should  Mrs.  Howe  do  about  the 
Roman  scarf  commissions  in  prospect  of  which  she  had 
been  revelling,  and  of  which  she  had  never  lost  sight 
during  their  progress  toward  the  Eternal  City  ? 

Well — the  Vatican  and  all  the  picture  galleries  might 
go,  but  the  scarfs  must  and  should  be  had  !  The  first  day 
she  drove  about  pretty  generally  and  saw  St.  Peter's,  the 
Forum,  the  Coliseum  and  the  Pantheon.  The  next,  dis- 
regarding Mr.  Howe's  expostulations  and  even  anger,  she 
set  out  resolutely  to  explore  for  the  coveted  fabrics,  and 
during  the  morning  discovered  that  gold  work  of  the  most 
exquisite  description  was  also  a  Roman  specialty.  Inevi- 
table consequence — hours  of  rapture  over  the  Castellani  and 
less  celebrated  show-cases,  and  not  a  picture  nor  a  statue 
beheld  by  Mrs.  David  Howe  that  day  !  In  the  evening 
at  the  table  d'hote  she  descanted  upon  her  shopping  suc- 
cesses to  some  countrywomen  with  ideals  like  her  own, 
and  as  they  all  rose  from  dinner,  her  glowing — "■  Come  to 
my  room  and  see  my  scarfs  !  ' '  could  hardly  have  been  sur- 
passed in  triumphant  pride  by  the — ''Come  and  let  me 
show  you  my  jewels!  "  of  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi  in 
the  same  city  two  thousand  years  before. 

As  she  returned  to  Paris  she  was  full  of  apprehension 
lest  her  modiste  should  not  have  completed  her  various 
orders.  ''You  know,  mother,"  she  said  on  relating  her 
experience  after  she  got  home,  "  that  Le  Brun,  that  favor- 
ite dressmaker  who  speaks  English,  never  will  keep  her  en- 
gagements, and  quite  often    ladies  have   to  wait  over  a 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  I75 

steamer  or  two  before  they  can  get  their  things — and  yet 
she's  so  awfully  stylish  that  people  can't  bear  to  go  any- 
where else.  Before  I  got  back  to  Paris  I  made  my  plan. 
I  was  fitted  before  I  left,  and  I  had  ordered  all  my  dresses, 
and  engaged  them  to  be  done  a  fortnight  before  I  really 
wanted  'em  so  as  to  make  sure  of  having  'em.  When  we 
got  to  Paris  I  had  only  three  days  before  we  left  for  Liver- 
pool. I  drove  at  once  to  Le  Brun  and  said  I  had  been 
detained,  but  I  supposed  my  things  were  ready,  as  they 
were  promised  for  two  whole  weeks  before.  Just  as  I  ex- 
pected, Le  Brun  sent  word  that  ''Madame's  dresses  were 
not  done."  I  said  I  was  very  glad  to  hear  it,  for  I 
should  prefer  to  try  them  on  to  make  sure  they  were  all 
right  before  finishing.  Could  I  do  so  then  ?  ' '  Very 
sorry ;  but  Madame  Le  Brun  was  just  fitting  another  cus- 
tomer." Then  could  I  come  the  next  morning  at  ten,  I 
asked?  *'0h,  certainly,  Madame's  dresses  should  be 
ready  to-morrow  at  ten. ' '  Next  day  I  went  and  waited  an 
hour,  and  no  dresses  forthcoming — not  even  one ;  at  last, 
as  I  insisted,  Le  Brun  sent  word  that  her  forewoman  had 
been  taken  sick  and  the  dresses  were  not  in  a  state  to  be 
fitted.  Oh,  I  said — then  the  dresses  are  not  cut?  So 
much  the  better.  Go  and  tell  Madame  Le  Brun  that  I 
will  not  take  them  at  all  now.  She  could  not  possibly 
finish  them  and  I  could  not  possibly  wait,  as  we  sail  im- 
mediately. At  this,  Le  Brun  came  rustling  down  herself. 
*'  Pardon  !  Madame's  dresses  air  cut,  but  dey  cannot  be 
feenish.  I  hope — I  am  zure — Madame  vill  be  good  enough 
to  vait  a  verra  few  days,  or  to  let  me  sen  dem  apres 
Madame!"  Not  at  all,  Madame  Le  Brun.  It  is  now 
almost  eleven  o'clock,  and  I  give  you  forty-eight  hours. 
In  forty-eight  hours  to  the  minute  if  my  dresses  are  not 


176  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

done  and  in  their  boxes  in  this  room,  all  ready  to  take 
away,  I  leave  them  on  your  hands.  "  Imposseeble,  Mad- 
ame— imposseeble!  Madame  may  call,  mais,"  shrugging 
her  shoulders,  *'she  will  not  fine  her  dresses!  "  To  the 
minute  I  called  as  I  said  I  would,  and  there  sure  enough 
they  were — actually  in  their  boxes !  All  the  same  I  took 
them  out  and  looked  them  all  over  in  Le  Brun's  presence, 
for  I  was  determined  to  make  sure  they  were  exactly  what 
I  bargained  for.  These  French  women  cheat  awfully,  you 
know,  if  they  think  you're  not  up  to  'em  !  So  I  came  off 
with  flying  colors,  and  Mrs.  Barber  was  perfectly  hopping 
when  I  told  her,  for  she  wanted  to  sail  with  us,  and  Le 
Brun  has  kept  her  hanging  on  three  weeks  for  two  dresses, 
and  I  got  my  four  lovely  ones  all  made  and  boxed  in 
practically  two  days — for  I  don't  believe  one  thread  of 
them  had  been  touched  !  ' ' 

**She  probably  made  her  work- women  sit  up  day  and 
night  for  the  forty-eight  hours  to  do  them,"  commented 
Mr.  Howe,  who  had  not  enjoyed  paying  for  them. 

*'Very  likely,"  said  Fanny,  indifferently,  ''but  that's 
their  lookout !  Mine  was  to  get  my  dresses,  and  I  did  I 
Say,  mother,  don't  you  think  this  white  one  is  sweet — 
finished  with  the  pale  Roman  sash  and  bows?" 

**  Per-{^c\\y  elegant  1  "  prolonged  Mrs.  Dexter,  raptur- 
ously— "  ^^-quisite  !  " 

**/  almost  hate  to  see  it!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Howe. 
**  Nothing  I  could  say  would  turn  Fanny  from  spending 
one  of  our  two  pitiful  days  in  Rome  in  hunting  those  rags, 
when  she  could  have  got  them  just  as  well  in  Paris,  of 
course. '  * 

'*Not  so  cheap,  Davy,"  said  Fanny,  reprovingly. 

**  What's  a  few  francs  more  or  less  when  you're  spend- 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  177 

ing  fifteen  or  twenty  dollars  a  day  each,  in  travelling  and 
hotels  and  cabs?  Those  sculptures  in  the  Vatican — 
there's  nothing  approaching  them  in  the  whole  world. 
They  took  my  breath  away.  You  can't  conceive  what 
sculpture  is  until  you  see  them,  and  Fanny  wouldn't  go 
near  them — not  even  for  half  an  hour." 

''The  sculpture' 11  keep,"  said  Fanny,  laughing  at  his 
disgust — ''I'll  see  'em  next  time!  Besides,  I  don't  be- 
lieve they  are  much  ahead  of  those  in  the  Louvre.  I  saw 
those,  and  I  didn't  care  much  for  'em  !  Any  way,  Rome 
doesn't  compare  with  Paris  !  I  really  don't  see  why  peo- 
ple make  such  a  time  over  it !  'Tisn't  half  what  it's 
cracked-up  to  be.  /  think  it's  rather  of  a  shabby,  mean 
looking  old  place  !  The  sights  I  did  see  disappointed  me 
dreadfully.  Judging  from  the  Coliseum  and  the  Pantheon, 
the  Romans  didn't  have  much  of  an  idea  what  a  handsome 
building  was,  I  should  say.  As  for  the  Forum,  it's  a  per- 
fect fraud.  A  few  old  pillars  standing  about,  and  a  bat- 
tered old  arch  !  Even  St.  Peter's  didn't  look  so  very 
large  to  me,  if  it  is  the  biggest  church  in  the  world.  If 
your  old  Vatican  you  rave  over  so  was  no  better  than  the 
rest,  I  spent  my  time  much  better  over  my  dear  scarfs  and 
my  lovely  ram's-head  breast-pin  and  beetle  cuff- buttons. 
Castellani  asked  such  a  price  for  his  that  I  rummaged 
about  till  I  found  some  nearly  as  pretty  for  about  half. ' ' 

Returning  from  the  continent  with  full  trunks  and 
empty  heads — what  typical  New  York  women  were  Julia 
and  Fanny  Dexter,  and  how  perfectly  the  now  remorse- 
lessly ugly  metropolis  which  New  York  women  are  so 
proud  to  call  their  home,  has  come  to  express  their  own 
strange  and  most  un-American  lack  of  culture  !  It  is  not 
that  they  love  clothes  too  much.     It  is  that  they  do  not 


178  ATE IV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

love  other  things  enough.  Within  their  homes,  many  of 
them,  like  the  alluring  Dexter  daughters,  are  living, 
breathing  Works  of  Art — so  perfectly  have  they  mastered 
the  difficult  and  subtle  Art  of  Dress.  But  there  their  cul- " 
ture  of  the  Beautiful  stops,  and  with  theirs,  apparently, 
that  of  their  husbands. 

Of  course  a  beautiful  woman  beautifully  dressed  is  the 
most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world — and  I  have  often  won- 
dered whether  it  is  because  the  natural  craving  for  the 
Beautiful  is  continually  appeased  for  New  York  men  by 
the  costume-fascinations  of  their  wives  and  daughters,  that 
they  are  so  extraordinarily  indifferent  to  the  frightful  aes- 
thetic negations  of  the  town  they  are  content,  and  the  rest 
of  us  are  forced,  to  dwell  in  ?  Or  is  it  that  whenever  they 
get  frantic  to  see  something  not  deadly  *'  uninteresting  " — 
(we  thank  thee,  Matthew  Arnold,  for  stamping  America 
as  man  makes  it,  with  that  most  expressive  word  !) — they 
can  jump  into  a  steamer  and  satisfy  their  longings  on  the 
other  side  ? 

A  few  years  ago  a  gifted  sculptor  said  to  me  one  evening 
in  New  York:  "I'm  disgusted — I'm  sick — heart-sick 
over  this  country  !  In  Lafayette  Place  they  are  pulling 
down  an  old  church,  and  the  contractor  who  bought  the 
materials  offered  to  give  any  one  who  would  take  them 
away  the  fluted  pillars  of  the  Greek  porch — great  ,i;raniLe 
monoliths  eighteen  feet  high,  every  one  of  them  !  The  city 
might  have  hauled  them  up  to  Central  Park  and  grouped 
them  in  any  fashion,  anywhere,  and  they  would  have  been 
lovely  and  a  joy  forever ; — and  because  no  one  would  save 
them,  the  contractor  is  breaking  them  to  pieces  !  " 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


A  BROKEN   HEART. 


I  SUPPOSE  that  sooner  or  later  to  every  adult  human 
heart  the  worst  thing  happens  that  can  happen,  and  to 
each  one  of  us  that  dread  event,  whatever  it  may  be,  is 
the  real  scythe  of  Time  that  mows  us  down.  After  that, 
though  we  may  linger  long,  in  reality  we  are  slowly,  sure- 
ly, dying  all  the  while. 

Julia  Calvert's  happiness  in  her  exquisite  baby  proved 
but  a  brief  seraphic  dream  with  a  ghastly  awakening. 
The  lovely  infant,  which  belonged  to  that  angehcal  host  of 
children  who  are  popularly  said  to  be  "too  good  to  live," 
and  who  probably  are  "  taken  away  from  the  evil  to 
come,"  after  about  two  years,  for  the  mother,  of  passion- 
ate fascination  and  of  joy,  developed  symptoms  of  water 
on  the  brain.  To  the  undisciplined  woman  was  meted 
out  nearly  three  weeks  of  awful  apprehension  and  sus- 
pense, of  which  the  intolerable  ending  was  a  last  faint 
baby  breath  fluttering  down  into  the  silence  of  the  grave. 

That  this  child  should  be  taken  from  her  was  to  Julia 
so  simply  incedible,  that  she  would  not  believe  such  a 
thing  could  be  until  she  saw  the  little  sufferer  composed 
into  marble  stillness  before  her.  The  frantic  mother  had 
felt  that  some  change  must  happen — some  miracle  must  be 
worked  to  save  her  idol;  and  when  death  proved  pitiless 
and  she  had  to  lay  her  heart's  only  darling  in  the  unre- 


i8o  NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

turning  ground,  she  did  not  care  how  soon  they  laid  her- 
self there  too.  Before  her  parbxysms  of  grief  Calvert  was 
powerless  and  dismayed.  ''Am  I  nothing — is  Clara — are 
we  then  nothing  to  you,  Julia  ?  "  he  appealed  to  her  in  one 
of  them. 

"O  Frank,  don't  ask  me!  Don't  talk  to  me!  You 
can't  conceive  of  such  love  as  mine  for  Flora.  I  don't 
know  who  is  and  who  isn't  in  the  world  now.  Everything 
is  blackness  of  darkness. ' ' 

Julia  never  attempted  to  be  consoled.  She  did  not 
want  to  be  consoled.  That,  to  her  narrow  conception, 
would  have  been  unfaithfulness  to  her  angel  Flora.  She 
did  not  reflect,  in  her  earth-bound  mind,  that,  dear  as 
Flora  was  to  her,  and  wild  with  interest  and  curiosity  as 
she  had  been  to  know  into  what  sort  of  woman  the  win- 
some creature  would  grow,  even  so  was  she  herself  precious 
to  her  Creator,  and  that  even  as  she  was  grieving  over  the 
untimely  blight  of  the  rare  dawning  qualities  of  her  treas- 
ure, so  doubtless  was  her  Father  in  Heaven  deploring  the 
far  worse,  because  self-imposed  blight,  of  all  her  own. 

Outside  of  herself  she  perceived  nothing.  She  was  not 
only  the  centre  of  her  own  universe.  She  was  its  circum- 
ference as  well.  Her  personal  woe  spread  far  beyond  the 
stars  and  blotted  both  them  and  their  Maker  out.  After 
her  baby's  departure  she  took  no  interest  in  anything. 
Though  now  perfectly  sure  that  her  husband  indulged  in 
alien  loves  in  Paris,  she  cared  nothing  about  it.  Indeed 
she  was  rather  glad  that  his  warmth  and  caresses  were  sen- 
sibly diminished,  for  so  she  was  spared  the  effort  of  trying 
not  to  repulse  them. 

Her  other  child  was  a  pretty,  healthy  little  thing,  full 
of  talent  and  questioning,   who  only  wanted  occupation 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  l8l 

for  her  inexhaustible  energy  to  make  her  happy  and  con- 
tented all  day  long.  But  her  mother  never  took  the  least 
trouble  about  her.  It  would  have  broken  Froebel's  heart 
to  hear  Clara  fret  and  cry  for  long  minutes,  while  Julia  sat 
reading  a  novel  or  talking  to  a  friend,  until  at  last  she 
would  rouse  herself  to  say,  ''What  does  ail  you,  Clara? 
Naughty  child!" — and  to  hear  the  little  one's  tearful 
answer,  ''I  want  somfin  to  do."  ''Well,yf«^/  something 
to  do  then !  You  mustn't  be  so  cross  !  " — and  that  would 
be  the  end  of  it. 

Thus  Julia  Calvert,  wrapped  in  her  own  sensations, 
utterly  failed  to  see  that  a  brilliant,  noble-hearted  man, 
and  a  splendid  little  girl,  both  of  whom  she  might  have 
influenced  to  all  happiness  and  good,  were  so  living  at  her 
side  that  she  was  daily  driving  them  farther  and  farther 
away  from,  instead  of  leading  them  toward,  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven. 

Before  she  had  laid  aside  her  mourning  for  little  Flora, 
the  Civil  War  broke  out.  Her  father,  Mr.  Dexter,  had 
always  been  a  Democrat,  for  the  simple  reason  that  in  his 
da}'  the  Democratic  party  had  nearly  always  been  the 
party  in  power.  Like  most  men,  he  gravitated  irresistibly 
to  the  strongest  side,  and  like  most  wonien,  Julia's  poli- 
tics were  her  father's. 

Frank  Calvert  was  a  Democrat,  too,  but  with  much 
more  definite  ideas  on  the  subject  than  his  little  wife.  As 
belonging  to  the  importing  and  selling  class,  the  low  ' '  tar- 
iff for  revenue  only  "  of  the  political  inheritors  of  Jefferson 
were  much  more  to  his  interest  than  the  high  protective 
duties  of  the  Whigs.  Consequently  he  opposed  the  Whigs 
'•  on  principle."  Moreover,  he  approved  of  the  let-alone 
policy  of  the  Democratic  party  toward  the  slavery  ques- 


152  NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

tion,  for  like  all  the  men  of  the  world  of  his  day,  he 
thought  the  then  southern  labor  system  quite  good  enough 
for  "  niggers." 

''It's  not  an  affair  for  Congress  to  meddle  with  at  all !  " 
cried  he.  "  Let  each  State  decide  it  when  it  comes  into  the 
Union,  as  they  did  prior  to  this  damned  Abolition.  The 
constitution  recognizes  slaves  as  property,  and  what  is 
their  "property"  Southerners  have  just  as  much  right  to 
take  with  them  into  the  Territories  as  Northerners  have  to 
take  their  property  there.  There's  no  sense  nor  justice  in 
any  other  view,  and  if  the  South  is  mad  because  this  new- 
fangled party  called  ''Republican"  is  organized  to  keep 
slave-owners  out  of  the  Territories  that  they've  got  just  as 
much  right  to  as  we  have — by  George  !  I  don' t  wonder  ! 
The  Territories  are  the  common  right  of  every  citizen  of 
the  United  States  who  wants  to  emigrate  into  them.  Do  you 
suppose  Virginia  would  ever  have  given  up  that  enormous 
piece  of  her  land-grant  that  made  those  four  great  States 
of  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois  and  Kentucky,  if  she'd  supposed 
her  people  were  to  be  kept  from  settling  beyond  the  Mis- 
sissippi if  they  wanted  to  ?  There  was  never  such  a  free 
gift  of  territory  to  a  government  since  the  world  began, 
as  Virginia  gave  the  Union  out  of  pure  generosity  !  And 
is  the  North  going  to  pay  her  back  by  not  letting  her 
citizens  take  their  slaves  with  them  in  case  they  want  to 
go  West?" 

Julia  listened,  and  thought  it  was  all  reasonable  enough. 

But  when,  to  the  amazement  of  Northern  Democrats, 
several  Southern  States  actually  seceded  from  the  Union, 
and  not  only  so,  South  Carolina  attacked  and  took  a 
United'States  fort  in  Charleston  harbor — every  considera- 
tion of  what  was  or  was  not  "  constitutional  "  in  the  pre- 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  183 

ceding  acts  of  the  two  sections,  shrivelled  and  disappeared 
like  parchment  in  the  flame  of  fury  that  swept  over  the 
North  at  this  blow  against  what  the  supreme  efforts  of 
Washington  and  his  co-workers  to  secure,  had  made  in 
American  eyes  the  very  "  Palladium  "  of  American  Lib- 
erty— the  Federal  Union. 

Mr.  Dexter,  as  was  to  be  expected,  turned  with  the  tide, 
and  savagely  hoped  that  ''  enough  Southern  blood  to  float 
a  navy  would  be  shed  to  paV  for  Sumter ;  "  and  Julia,  with 
her  intense  and  characteristic  loyalty  to  whatever  was  her 
own,  felt  with  her  father,  and  with  her  own  section. 

Like  hosts  of  others,  who,  immediately  decided  that  it 
was  the  peculiar  depravity  engendered  by  the  '' peculiar 
institution"  which  had  made  such  an  unnatural  crime  as 
*' rebellion"  against  their  "lawful"  government  possible, 
Julia  became  the  most  bigoted  of  Republicans,  the  most 
ardent  of  Northerners,  and  the  most  contemptuous  and 
pitiless  of  feminine  foes  of  the  Seceders. 

Calvert  still  doggedly  maintained  his  previous  opinions, 
and  if  anything  could  further  have  alienated  the  ill-yoked 
pair,  it  would  have  been  his  indifference  to  Union  victo- 
ries, his  anger  and  disgust  at  one  "unconstitutional"  act 
of  the  Republican  administration  after  another — and,  per 
contra,  her  incessant  stream  of  sarcasm  and  resentment 
against  "rebels,""  traitors"  and  "copperheads,"  and  her 
intense  triumph  and  elation  at  every  Union  success. 

She  heard  one  day  that  the  husband  of  a  former  friend 
of  hers  who  lived  in  the  South  had  joined  the  Confederate 
army.  "  I  hope  they'll  have  a  bomb-shell  in  the  middle 
of  their  breakfast  table  some  fine  morning !  "  cried  Julia. 

^' Julia/''  exclaimed  her  husband,  sternly — "and  you 
pretend  to  be  a  '  Christian  !  '     You  want  your  friend  to 


1 84  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

see  her  boy's  head  blown  off,  I  suppose;  or  perhaps  you'd 
prefer  her  own  limbs  shattered  !  Is  that  what  you  call 
loving  and  forgiving  your  enemies  ?  ' ' 

**  They're  not  my  enemies,"  said  Julia,  unabashed. 
**  They're  the  enemies  of  my  country." 

**If  you  were  down  there,  you'd  think  and  act  just  as 
they  do.  They've  been  brought  up  to  believe  each  of 
their  own  States  sovereign.  You've  been  brought  up  to 
believe  the  Union  sovereign.  .  It's  all  a  matter  of  which 
side  of  the  line  people  are  on.  One's  just  as  bad  as  the 
other. ' ' 

''  One  isn't !  They're  the  ones  to  blame  !  They — be- 
— gan — this — war,  Frank  Calvert!  You  can't  deny  that. 
They  brought  it  on  themselves." 

**Yes,  after  the  North  had  been  sticking  pins  and 
needles  into  'em  for  a  generation  until  they  were  about 
crazy  ! — writing  books  and  editing  newspapers  and  hold- 
ing meetings  up  here  to  hold  them  up  to  the  scorn  of  the 
civilized  world,  and  encouraging  their  slave  property  to 
run  away.  Why,  John  Brown  even  tried  to  make  their 
slaves  rise  in  insurrection  against  them  !  Perhaps  you 
don't  know  what  a  slave  insurrection  means,  Mrs.  Calvert? 
— though  you  would  if  you  would  read  about  San  Do- 
mingo,— merely  white  women  outraged  by  black  fiends 
and  white  babies  stuck  on  bayonets  !  I  tell  you,  Julia, 
John  Brown  fired  the  first  shot  of  this  war,  and  when  the 
North  elected  Lincoln,  a  purely  sectional  candidate,  and 
a  man  pledged  to  keep  slavery  out  of  the  Territories,  no 
wonder  the  South  felt  that  equal  rights  between  the  sec- 
tions were  over.     So  they  were. ' ' 

''  They  had  no  business  to  want  to  spread  such  a  wicked 
system  in  the  Territories,"  declared  Julia.     <'The  Abo- 


NEW  YORK;   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  1 85 

litionists  were  right  when  they  said  that  *  Slavery  is  the 
sum  of  all  villainies.'  The  rebels  trying  to  overthrow 
such  a  blessed  government  as  ours  for  the  sake  of  slavery 
proves  it.     Wretches  !  " 

* '  Those  slaves  are  just  as  well  off  as  any  laboring 
classes,"  retorted  Calvert;  "  in  fact,  better  off  than  most. 
They've  plenty  to  eat  and  drink,  they're  not  very  hard 
worked,  and  they're  fat  and  shining — '  happy  as  a  clam  * 
most  of  the  time — dancing  and  singing  and  jolly,  and 
when  they're  sick  they're  taken  care  of  I  wish  you  could 
see  in  contrast  the  peasants  and  the  artisans  in  the  south  of 
France,  as  I  have — living  on  black  bread  and  carrot  broth 
— poor  devils  ! — and  boiled  meat  about  once  a  month  !  " 

''Slavery's  a  horrid  system,"  insisted  Julia;  "slave 
masters  have  no  morals.  The  pretty  mulatto  girls  and 
quadroons  are  all  nothing  but  their  mistresses,  they  say." 

"  Slave  masters  have  as  much  morals  as  other  rich  men. 
Pretty  girls  of  all  working  classes  generally  go  more  or  less 
to  the  bad — can  'most  always  be  bought.  Why,  it's  a 
regular  family  saying  in  France  if  a  working-girl  has  a 
pretty  face — '  E  lie  f era  fortune.'  " 

''Yes,  in  your  beloved  France,  I  don't  doubt!  But  I 
don't  believe  the  North  is  as  bad  as  that.  And  besides, 
look  how  they  sell  families  apart — tear  mothers  from  their 
children  !     Outrageous  !  ' ' 

"  I  guess  the  mothers  are  pretty  often  glad  to  get  rid  of 
'em  !  I  know  Southern  men  have  told  me  that  nigger 
husbands  and  wives  often  ask  to  be  sold  apart.  I  tell  you, 
Jule,  it's  all  bosh  to  credit  the  lower  classes  with  all  the 
fine-spun  feelings  and  sentiments  of  the  upper  classes. 
And  besides,  don't  white  parents  have  to  part  from  their 
children  when  necessity  requires?     Look  at  me!     Didn't 


1 86  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

I  leave  my  mother  when  I  ,was  a  shaver  of  fourteen  and 
come  to  New  York  to  earn  my  living?  " 

''Well,  I  hope  the  war  will  never  end  while  there  is  a 
single  slave  !  The  fact  that  no  slave  woman  can  be  a  law- 
ful wife  is  enough  for  me.  How  those  Southern  women 
can  pretend,  even,  to  any  self-respect  and  tolerate  what 
they  do,  I  can't  conceive." 

''  Probably  in  the  same  way  that  you  can  call  down  ven- 
geance on  them  and  pretend  to  be  a  Christian,"  sneered 
her  husband.  ''  For  my  part,  I  think  '  the  pot  better  not 
call  the  kettle  black.'  " 

In  common  with  most  Northern  women,  Julia  was  en- 
thusiastic over  that  first  downward  step  in  American  chiv- 
alry and  rev^erence  toward  the  weaker  sex,  of  which  so 
many  have  now  been  taken  that  there  are  not  many  more 
to  take, — the  infamous  ''General  Order  No.  28."  of 
General  Butler  against  the  New  Orleans  women. 

At  the  time  it  happened  she  and  Calvert  had  one  of 
their  hot  disputes  over  it. 

"I  am  surprised  that  ym,  Julia!  "  exclaimed  her  hus- 
band, "with  your  grand  views  about  the  equal  value  of 
women  with  men — don't  see  what  you  admit  in  applaud- 
ing this  dastardly  act  of  a  militia  bully — for  no  trained 
soldier  could  dream  of  dragging  his  flag  in  such  filth  !  If 
a  rebel  woman  insults  our  troops  or  our  flag,  let  her  be 
punished  as  a  rebel  man  would  be, — nothing  more — noth- 
ing less.  But  you,  the  refined  and  fastidious  Julia  Calvert, 
instead  of  bemg  indignant  at  this  vile  outrage  against  your 
sex,  are  actually  glorying  that  Butler  has  proclaimed  to  his 
soldiers  that  they  may  regard  such  a  woman  as  a  woman  of 
the  town  and  treat  her  accordingly  !  ' ' 

"I   don't   care!"    cried    Julia;     ''anything    is    good 


NEIV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  187 

enough  for  rebel  women  !  How  dare  they  spit  on  the 
United  States  flag?  Now  let  'em  squirm  in  a  strong 
man's  hand  1  Ha,  ha !  They've  got  just  what  they 
deserve,  /  say  !  General  Butler's  the  right  man  in  the 
right  place,  and  the  whole  North  thinks  so  !  " 

''/don't  think  so!"  returned  Calvert;  ''/think  he 
ought  to  be  drummed  out  of  the  service  and  out  of  the 
society  of  decent  men  as  a  national  disgrace  !  ' ' 

"Oh,  you!''  returned  Julia,  in  lofty  contempt;  "of 
course  you  despise  anybody  who  fights  for  the  Union.  All 
copperheads  do  !  " 

"Well,  my  girl,"  flamed  Calvert,  with  revengeful  eyes 
— "hitherto  in  America  a  woman  was  something  whose 
sex  protected  her;  but  if  you  gentle  ladies  don't  want 
it  so  any  longer — all  right  I  Instead  of  holding  you 
up  over  our  heads,  perhaps  we'll  find  it  quite  as  easy  as 
your  "strong"  General  Butler,  to  push  you  to  the  wall 
— or  even  worse — whenever  we  have  a  mind  to  / — Just  put 
that  into  your  pipe  and  smoke  it !  "  and  he  stalked  wrath- 
fully  away,  leaving  Julia  to  grind  her  teeth  and  think  how 
she  hated  him. 

And  so,  as  in  ten  thousands  of  other  homes  in  both  sec- 
tions, the  great  national  struggle  was  waged  in  miniature 
ever}'  time  the  subject  came  up,  and  in  this  case  with  sim- 
ilar alienating  results,  until  the  pair  grew  so  deadly  cold  to 
each  other  that  the  final  manifestation  of  it  shocked  even 
themselves. 

On  one  of  Calvert's  return  voyages,  a  long  and  terrific 
storm  disabled  and  delayed  the  steamer  on  which  he 
was.  On  landing,  Calvert  first  reported,  as  usual,  to 
his  employer,  and  at  the  end  of  a  fatiguing  day  hastened 
home  with  an  overflowing  heart  that  after  his  perils  and 


1 88  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

terrors  longed  for  a  warm  and  tender  welcome  from  those 
he  loved.  As  it  happened,^  Mrs.  Dexter  and  Fanny  were 
in  the  drawing-room  with  Julia  and  little  Clara  and  also  a 
young  lady  friend  who  was  staying  there. 

Clara  rushed  impetuously  into  her  father's  arms,  but 
Julia  rose  languidly,  and  kissing  him  slightly,  exclaimed — 
''Well — I  didn't  know  but  what  you  had  gone  to  the 
bottom  !  " 

''Rather  hoped  I  had,  didn't  you?"  returned  he, 
laughing,  though  he  was  cruelly  hurt.  "  No,  we  didn't 
quite  get  there,  though  we  tried  our  best.  But  we  had  an 
awful  time!  " 

' '  Oh,  do  tell  us  about  it !  "  exclaimed  the  visiting  ladies. 

He  began  a  thrilling  recital  of  the  storm  and  of  their 
danger,  and  the  others  were  listening  breathlessly,  when 
Julia  broke  in  with  : — 

"By  the  way,  Frank,  did  you  remember  to  get  me  in 
Paris  the  black  grenadine  I  wrote  about  ?  ' ' 

For  a  moment  Calvert  seemed  dazed,  then  rising,  an- 
swered crisply,  "  I  am  happy  to  say,  Mrs.  Calvert,  that  I 
completely  forgot  it !  "  and  with  a  transformed  and  freez- 
ing look  he  took  his  valise  and  went  up  stairs. 

"  Oh,  Julia  !  "  cried  the  dismayed  women,  as  his  ascend- 
ing step  grew  fainter,  "how  could  you,  when  you  know 
how  sensitive  he  is  !     You've  hurt  his  feelings  dreadfully." 

"  How  could  I  suppose  he  would  fly  out  at  a  little  thing 
like  that?"  retorted  Julia,  pettishly.  "It  just  came  into 
my  head  and  I  thought  I'd  ask  about  it  before  it  slipped 
my  mind,  as  my  dressmaker  has  been  waiting  three  days 
for  the  goods.  Supposing  the  steamer  would  be  on  time, 
I  engaged  her  to  make  it  this  week." 

Calvert  did  not  go  to  his  wife's  room,  but  to  the  uppe 


JV£IV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  189 


« 


floor,  where  he  locked  himself  in  and  stared  out  of  the 
window  until  dinner-time.  He  would  not  even  admit 
Clara.  Alas,  in  his  danger  on  that  awful  ocean  he  had 
made  so  many  resolves,  and  now  in  his  bitterness  they 
were  so  contemptuously  dispersed  ! 

On  reflection,  Julia  was  ashamed  enough  of  her  brutal- 
ity to  try  after  dinner  to  apologize  for  it.  But  Calvert  cut 
her  short  with — "  Don't  be  a  hypocrite,  Julia  !  A  woman 
who  could  regret  such  things  couldn't  do  them.  A  super- 
fluous husband — that's  about  it.  No  one  could  mistake 
such  a  reception." 

''No,  no,  Frank!"  cried  Julia,  bursting  into  tears; 
''but — but — "  sobbing  convulsively,  "since  baby  died — 
my  heart  is  a  stone, — and — and — I  can't  melt  it  back  !  1 
ought  to  die,"  continued  she,  wildly,  "and  leave  you  to 
get  some  one  else  to  make  you  happy  !  ' ' 

Her  husband  made  no  movement  to  comfort  her.  He 
felt  no  impulse  to  do  so.  He  simply  looked  at  her  a  mo- 
ment, then  ejaculating  "  God  help  us  !  "  he  left  the  room. 
His  next  voyage  was  to  be  his  last,  for  he  was  going  into 
business  for  himself,  and  he  had  been  wondering  how  he 
was  even  to  keep  up  appearances  for  a  wife  who  apparently 
had  not  one  throb  of  feeling  for  him — who  in  fact  prob- 
ably had  an  aversion  to  him  ! 

The  sequel  will  show  what  might  have  resulted  to  the 
strong  and  strenuous  Calvert  and  to  his  country,  had  the 
wife  of  his  youth  been  as  womanly  as  she  was  feminine. 

As  it  was — at  only  thirty-two  years  old,  our  poor  Julia 
was  incapable  of  knowing  or  caring  what  she  did  to  her 
husband  or  to  anybody.  Her  death  of  the  heart  after 
Mora's  death  had  spread,  as  it  always  does,  to  the  citadel 
of  physical  life  as  well,  and  she  had  lapsed  into  that  weak- 


icio  JV£W  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

1 
ness  of  body  and  numbness  of  spirit  to  which  we  mortals 
yield  when  hope  is  gone  aad  we  are  ready  for  the  de- 
stroyer. Even  her  country,  passionately  as  she  gave  to  it 
the  last  of  earthly  feeling  that  she  had,  could  not  rouse  her 
to  any  effort.  If  she  could  have  interested  herself  in  the 
work  that  other  women  everywhere  were  doing  for  the  sol- 
diers, she  might  have  been  saved.  But  of  this  her  life- 
long indolence  and  selfishness  prevented  her  from  even 
thinking. 

When,  therefore,  Calvert  returned  from  his  final  three 
months'  absence,  he  was  shocked  to  find  his  wife  in  a 
hopeless  and  rapid  decline.  God  was  indeed  ''helping" 
him  in  the  only  way  he  could  be  helped,  for  his  perverse 
but  lovely  Julia  was  to  perish,  and  Mrs.  Dexter  was  to 
know  the  greatest  sorrow  of  which  her  cold  and  narrow 
affections  were  capable.  The  disease  whose  willing  victim 
her  daughter  was,  did  its  work  swiftly  but  not  ruthlessl} . 
Picture  as  she  had  been  in  health,  Julia  was  a  picture  in 
sickness,  a  statue  in  death,  and  from  the  first,  Calvert 
spared  nothing  that  could  give  her  any,  even  the  least, 
comfort  or  ease.  Her  mother  hung  over  her  through  it 
all,  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  telling  her  Belmont  friends 
in  her  usual  fictionary  style,  that  ''Julia  was  laid  out  in 
her  wedding-dress,  only  her  neck  and  arms  were  covered 
with  a  profusion  of  '  real '  lace !  Mr.  Calvert  would 
have  it  so,  though  it  did  seem  extravagant,  and  you  can't 
imagine  how  perfectly  ^jc-quisite  she  looked !  I  wish  you 
could  have  seen  the  flowers  !  They  were  /^r-fectly  mag- 
nificent !  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Nathan  Price,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Morton,  who  are  immensely  rich,  sent  the  most  ^/-egant 
crosses,  and  other  friends  sent  wreaths  and  bouquets.  The 
house  was  just  filled  with  them-a-h  !  " 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  191 

At  Mrs.  Dexter' s  desire,  Mr.  Calvert  had  the  wreath 
that  he  himself  had  ordered  for  the  coffin-lid,  '^  preserved," 
as  it  is  called,  and  framed  in  a  funereal  black  walnut  oval 
under  glass.  This  melancholy  souvenir  of  the  vanished 
Julia  hung  in  Mrs.  Dexter' s  bed-room  so  long  as  she  kept 
house  in  Belmont,  and  the  only  present  she  was  ever 
known  to  make  was  the  eventual  gift  of  the  dismal  object 
to  a  youth  for  whom  Julia  had  stood  sponsor ! 

Before  her  death  Julia  did  have  one  solicitude.  She 
earnestly  requested  that  Clara  should  never  be  sent  to  a 
boarding-school. 

Throughout  his  wife's  illness  Calvert  was  all  anxious 
tenderness,  and  she  responded  by  never  being  easy  when 
he  was  out  of  the  room.  During  his  business  hours  she 
enquired  the  time  continually,  and  when  he  was  with 
her,  her  eyes  followed  him  with  softness  and  content — her 
fragile  hand  often  went  out  to  his — her  weary  head  rested 
often  on  his  strong  and  willing  breast. 

As  after  a  drenching  and  dreary  day  a  pale  and  doubt- 
ful sun  will  sometimes  throw  a  parting  gleam  over  a  tear- 
ful world — so  at  the  end  of  this  unhappy  union,  a  few  rays 
from  that  Orb  of  Love  which  should  have  made  it  all  joy- 
ous, gilded  its  pathetic  close.  Julia's  sufferings  from  her 
cruel  disease  were  intense.  She  bore  them  patiently,  and 
may  what  they  and  all  her  trials  taught  her  appear  in  an- 
other life  !  Her  epitaph  for  this  one  should  have  been — 
* '  Une  existence  manquee  / ' ' 


CHAPTER  XXIL 


FACILIS    DESCENSUS. 


Josephine's  engagement  broken  off,  and  Julia  dead. 
Here  were  two  heavy  misfortunes  for  Mrs.  Dexter' s  elastic 
spirit ;  but  between  the  two  had  befallen  her  a  worse  one 
yet,  for  her  daughter  Fanny  had  been  obliged  to  give  up 
housekeeping ! 

The  self-denying  and  hard-working  Howe  had  not  many 
years  enjoyed  that  "  home  of  his  own  "  which  is  the  goal 
of  most  men's  exertions,  when  he  found  that  the  generous 
expenses  of  his  growing  family  and  of  his  wife's  toilet  de- 
manded a  greater  portion  of  his  income  than  he  felt  to  be 
prudent.  He  fain  would  have  had  a  larger  one  that  he 
might  make  larger  savings  for  the  future  benefit  of  those 
dear  to  him,  and  he  watched  eagerly  for  an  opening  in 
which  he  might,  as  the  phrase  goes,  ''make  some 
money." 

At  last  a  tempting  opportunity  offered  for  investing  in 
a  mine  whose  eventual  value  was  certain  and  whose 
present  condition  was  represented  to  him  as  such,  that  if 
fertilized  by  just  such  a  capital  as  his  own,  an  immediate 
harvest  of  profit  would  be  the  result.  After  the  purchase 
was  made,  he  found  that  a  much  larger  sum  would  be  re- 
quired to  put  the  mine  in  working  order  than  he  had  sup- 
posed.    He  did  not  possess  it,  but  as  hitherto  he   had 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  193 

always  been  prospered,  he  felt  secure  of  paying  the  money 
back  in  a  few  years ;  and  so  he  ventured  to  borrow  it. 

It  was  a  piece  of  rashness  of  which  in  his  bachelor  days 
he  would  not  have  been  capable,  but  a  cautious  person 
may  insensibly  become  nearly  the  reverse  by  living  with  a 
reckless  one — for  recklessness  Fanny's  dash  and  confi- 
dence in  life  might  well  be  called.  The  deed  had  been 
done  only  a  few  months,  when  the  country  was  convulsed 
and  commerce  distressed  by  the  tremendous  controversies 
of  the  Presidential  campaign  which  preceded  the  Civil 
War.  The  business  of  Mr.  Howe's  firm  was  in  fancy  arti- 
cles, imported  luxuries  and  superfluities  of  every  descrip- 
tion. Owing  to  the  uncertainty,  the  demand  for  these 
largely  suspended,  and  though  the  house  itself  stood  erect 
through  the  coming  troubles,  its  junior  member  soon  found 
himself  in  fearful  embarrassment.  In  anguish  he  told  his 
gay  and  pretty  wife  of  still  under  thirty,  though  she 
had  been  often  a  mother,  that  their  home  must  be  given 
up  or  transplanted  to  a  suburb,  their  expenses  reduced 
in  every  possible  way,  that  she  must  accept  temporarily 
an  allowance  for  her  dress,  and  that  pleasures  of  every 
kind  must  be  as  much  as  possible  curtailed. 

Fanny  heard  the  news  without  much  dismay  She  was 
naturally  a  philosopher,  and  generally  took  the  inevitable 
coolly.  To  her  husband's  great  reJef  she  spared  him 
either  reproach  or  criticism,  decided  for  boarding  as 
against  reduced  housekeeping,  and  tranquilly  transferred 
herself  and  her  family  from  the  roomy  enjoyment  of  a 
home,  into  the  cramped  limitations  of  a  hotel-suite  of 
three  bed-rooms  and  a  parlor.  The  hotel  was  a  large  and 
favorite  one  in  Brooklyn,  near  a  ferry,  and  as  she  gave 
Jeannette  the  dark  room  of  the  suite,  and  organized  with 


194  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

strict  method  the  family  belqngings  into  such  drawers  and 
closets  as  were  available,  she  did  not  find  herself  greatly 
inconvenienced  in  her  narrow  quarters. 

In  her  new  life  Mrs.  Howe  had  so  much  time  on  her 
hands  that  she  might  have  tried  to  save  her  husband's 
money  by  making  her  own  or  her  children's  clothes,  as 
her  own  mother,  and  his  also,  used  to  do  ;  but  she  never 
could  bear  plain  sewing.  She  would  sit  and  watch  a  seam- 
stress with  a  dragon  eye,  and  plan  her  work  for  her  in  the 
most  thorough  manner ;  Miss  Jeannette,  too,  would  co- 
operate on  the  sewing  machine  for  hours,  but  Fann\  never 
helped  them.  She  did  a  little  mending,  and  perpetrated 
endless  trifles  in  Berlin  wool,  even  of  these  ihvays  buy- 
ing patterns  already  worked  and  only  filling  them  in  ;  she 
skimmed  the  morning  paper  and  read  novels,  arranged  her 
drawers,  ripped  a  piece  of  lace  off  of  one  thing  to  have  it 
sewed  on  another,  went  often  over  to  Julia's  while  the  lat- 
ter still  lived,  and  above  all,  made  and  kept  endless 
appointments  with  her  bosom  friend,  Mrs.  Belnap — a 
little  widow  of  her  own  age,  who  had  just  money  enough 
to  live  on,  and  who  was  as  frivolous  and  as  willing  to  take 
a  risk  with  pleasure  attached,  as  Fanny  herself. 

Mrs.  Belnap  was  pretty,  and  being  marriageable,  had 
the  right  to  as  many  admirers  of  the  opposite  sex  as  her 
charms  could  command,  and  if  Mrs.  Howe  happened  to 
be  with  her  when  she  met  one  of  them,  the  latter  simply 
had  the  benefit  of  it  and  no  harm  was  done.  Thus  they 
furnished  each  the  propriety  for  the  other,  and  as  they 
were  almost  inseparable,  they  enjoyed  various  rather  haz- 
ardous diversions  together,  and  fancied  that  they  saved 
their  reputations  at  the  same  time. 

To  be  joined  in  their  Broadway  stroll  by  a  "gentle- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  1 95 

man  friend,"  to  be  invited  by  him  to  a  lunch  or  an  ice- 
cream at  a  quiet  restaurant,  to  finish  the  afternoon  at  a 
Philharmonic  rehearsal  or  a  theatre  matinee,  a  picture  gal- 
lery or  even  by  a  drive,  the  while  poor  unconscious  Howe 
was  straining  every  nerve  and  working  himself  to  a  shadow 
at  his  business,  were  not  impossible  occurrences ;  and  as 
they  had  once  belonged  to  the  same  class  of  society  as  the 
head  clerks  in  the  great  retail  establishments,  they  had 
quite  a  circle  of  speaking  acquaintance  with  whom  to  laugh 
and  chat  even  on  their  shopping  rounds. 

Fanny's  early  experience  with  Harvey  Thayer,  however, 
had  given  her  an  unfortunate  taste  for  the  genuine  exquis- 
ite which  no  number  of  admirers  in  her  own  sphere  could 
satisfy.  No  clerk,  no  fledgling  broker  or  lawyer  of  her 
acquaintance  bore  the  high-bred,  haughty  and  fastidious 
air  that  may  stamp  the  gilded  youth  of  any  opulent  and 
exclusive  society.  As  she  met  them  in  the  street  or  sat 
opposite  to  them  in  the  Madison  and  Fifth  Avenue  stages 
(such  men  used  to  ride  in  those  stages  then),  she  would 
wish  ardently  that  such  creatures  belonged  to  her  world 
or  she  to  theirs.  Moreover,  the  men  of  her  world  always 
had  so  much  to  do — nor  could  they  by  any  means  afford 
amusements  ''  regardless  of  expense."  In  spite  of  the  im- 
mense advance  she  had  made  over  her  contemporaries  in 
Belmont,  life  did  not  seem  to  yield  to  Fanny  all  it  ought. 
Even  yet,  she  had  but  half-way  scaled  the  social  preci- 
pice. The  top — the  real  plateau  of  Joy  and  Freedom — 
was  still  far  above  her  in  the  blue  ! 

Easily,  therefore,  as  "the  little  housekeeper"  had  ac- 
commodated herself  to  her  changed  circumstances,  they 
were  none  the  less  an  incalculable  misfortune  for  her.  So 
light-minded  a  woman  had  a  special  need  of  the  anchorage 


196  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

of  a  household — so  energetic  an  one  a  special  need  for  ita 
responsibilities.  As  I  have  ^aid,  Fanny's  mind  had  beer 
on  her  housekeeping  all  the  time.  Her  whole  establish- 
ment interested  her.  From  the  servants'  rooms,  which 
she  insisted  should  be  kept  neat  as  wax,  to  the  coal -bins, 
she  frequently  inspected  it  all.  Her  hospitalities,  her 
days  for  receiving  and  for  paying  calls,  the'  church  ''  Aid 
Society"  of  which  she  was  an  active  and  efficient 
member — while  even  all  these,  such  was  her  executive 
ability,  left  her  plenty  of  time  for  lounging  and  for  gad- 
ding over  to  Julia's  or  down  Broadway,  still  they  quite 
comfortably  occupied  her  busy  little  brain  and  made  hei 
feel  herself  more  or  less  a  real  member  of  established  so- 
ciety—a personage  with  a  definite  role  to  play  of  recog- 
nized character  and  importance.  To  be  deprived  of  it  all 
at  one  stroke  and  set  down  in  a  strange  neighboring  city 
to  board, — it  was  indeed  a  dangerous  experiment !  Mr. 
Howe  would  far  have  preferred  the  smallest  cottage  in  an 
inconvenient  suburb;  it  was  inexpressible  misery  to  him  to 
give  up  his  home.  But  living  at  a  "  hotel,"' even  in 
Brooklyn,  sounded  better — seemed  to  the  Dexter  mind  less 
of  a  "  come-down  " — than  the  other  alternative ;  and  the 
master  of  the  family  was  so  humiliated  by  the  result  oi 
his  mistake — it  was  so  terrible  to  him  to  have  deprivec 
his  wife  of  the  dear  realm  he  had  so  gladly  and  proudly 
given  her,  that  he  let  her  and  her  mother  decide  things  tc 
suit  themselves.  The  hidden  agonies,  the  unbreathed  tor 
tures  of  the  bread-winners  in  the  competitions  and  ship 
wrecks  of  the  business  world — who  can  measure  ! 

While  Julia  lived,  Fanny  had  some  approach  to  a  men 
tor,  for  the  former  never  hesitated  to  express  in  her  hear 
ing  her  high  disgust  and  disapproval  of  married  flirtations 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  19^ 

moreover,  her  house  was  a  safe  and  almost  daily  goal  for 
Fanny's  idle  but  restless  little  feet.  The  sisters,  though 
so  unlike,  admired  and  were  always  fond  of  each  other. 
Fanny  shared  the  family  reverence  for  the  ''  intellectual  " 
Julia,  while  Julia  delighted  in  Fanny's  cheerfulness  and 
go,  and  in  her  trenchant  so-called  common-sense.  But 
immediately  after  his  wife's  untimely  death,  Calvert  gave 
up  his  home,  placed  Clara  in  Mrs.  Dexter' s  care,  and  (to 
the  latter' s  infinite  joy)  paid  their  board  at  the  same  hotel 
with  the  Howes, — all  of  which  reduced  Fanny  to  Mrs.  Bel- 
nap's  two  rooms  in  a  boarding-house  as  her  only  familiaj 
resort  in  the  beloved  city. 

**  Satan  finds  some  mischief  still  for  idle  hands  to  do,'' 
and  to  no  class  is  more  mischief  possible  than  to  th( 
large  class  of  American  city  women  whose  husbands" 
earnings  and  indulgence  keep  them  as  Mr.  Howe  kep< 
Fanny— entirely  free  from  the  necessity  of  either  physical 
or  mental  exertion,  with  no  particular  place  in  society, 
and  with  the  absolute  liberty  of  coming  and  going  unsus- 
pected, unwatched  and  unquestioned  that  belongs  to  oui 
magnanimous  American  customs.  It  is  a  class  unique  in 
the  history  of  the  world — as  phenomenal  in  the  hitherto 
fixity  of  feminine  conditions,  as  are  the  floating  islands  of 
the  Mexican  lake  compared  with  the  everlasting  hills  of 
the  shores  about  them  !  Fanny  had  long  ago  caught  the 
best  New  York  cachet  in  dress,  and  so  well  understood  the 
colors  that  became  her,  that  she  was  a  target  for  every 
passing  eye.  Her  blithe  temperament  and  good  health 
had  preserved  her  youthful  bloom  and  shapeliness  in  spite 
of  her  frequent  motherhood,  and  the  perennial  freshness 
of  her  get-up  left  nothing  to  be  desired.  Her  toilet  was 
as  intense  a  pleasure  to  her  as  is  his  picture  to  an  artist. 


198  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

She  never  left  her  mirror  until  she  had  produced  the  de- 
sired effect — and  in  man  or  \Voman  there  is  hardly  a 
greater  external  charm  than  to  look,  as  Fanny  always  did, 
"as  if  just  out  of  a  band-box." 

Julia  had  been  dead  some  little  time,  and  in  her  sister's 
shifting  mind  her  maxims  and  harangues  were  losing  their 
hold.  Worse  still,  David  Howe  had  not  risen  in  his  wife's 
estimation,  for  though  the ''cruel  war  was  over,"  and 
many  people  had  come  out  of  it  ''  rich  beyond  the  dreams 
of  avarice,"  that  good  man  and  his  family  were  still 
domiciled — were  in  the  fifth  year  of  their  residence  at  the 
Brooklyn  hotel.  American-fashion,  he  kept  his  business 
affairs  so  wholly  to  himself  that  Fanny  was  able  to  judge 
very  little  about  them  ;  but  she  only  felt  the  more  that  if 
she  had  been  the  financial  head  of  the  married  partner- 
ship, either  she  would  never  have  got  into  trouble  at  all, 
or  she  would  have  recovered  the  family  fortunes  long  ago. 

*' What  on  earth,"  so  she  inwardly  fretted,  ''ever  pos- 
sessed David  Howe  to  invest  in  a  mine  ?  He  knew 
nothing  about  mining!  Why  wasn't  he  content  with  the 
good  solid  wholesale  business  he  had  grown  up  with,  and 
which  kept  us  all  so  comfortable  and  happy  ?  He  ought  to 
have  known  he  wasn't  the  kind  to  speculate  ! — Strange  that 
men  will  rather  run  the  risk  of  ruining  their  families  than 
let  well  enough  alone,  etc.,  etc." 

Thus  in  spite  of  the  outer  frippery  of  her  life,  in  the 
nethermost  depth  of  Fanny  Howe's  heart  a  sombre  tragedy 
was  now  going  on.  She  wanted,  oh,  she  wanted  back  her 
house — her  home — her  place — in  New  York,  and  she  saw 
no  prospect  of  getting  it.  Her  eager  executive  energies, 
with  their  daily  nothing-to-do  that  she  cared  to  do,  often 
bled  afresh  like  so  many  chopped-off,  living  things.     She 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  199 

had  supposed  her  Brooklyn  exile  would  last  but  a  year  or 
two,  as  Julia's  had,  and  here  she  was  suffering  it  still — 
was  still  cooped  up  in  a  hotel  suite  with  six  children! 
At  times  she  felt  half-frantic.  Her  sensitive,  scrupu- 
lous husband  was  contrasting  dangerously  in  her  mind 
with  the  bolder,  stronger  type  which  will  have  success. 
And  besides,  David  never  consulted  her,  never  confided  in 
her.  In  business  matters  he  had  always  kept  her  in  the 
dark,  like  a  child. — In  her  own  eyes  this  able  woman 
decidedly  had  her  deep  conjugal  wrongs  ! 

One  perfect  autumn  day  she  took  a  Broadway  stage  to 
make  a  wedding-call  up  town.  She  was  in  the  amiable 
exhilaration  and  bland  repose  of  a  new  and  particularly 
stunning  autumn  costume,  and  nearly  all  the  long  way 
from  the  ferry,  a  fashionably  dressed  young  man,  very 
dark,  of  un-American  aspect,  and  with  an  expression  of 
complete  self-will,  sat  opposite  her.  Fanny  saw  at  once 
that  he  was  one  of  her  longed-for  Inaccessibles,  and  by  the 
time  the  journey  was  half  over,  she  felt  that  for  some 
occult  reason  he  was  especially  attractive  to  herself.  As 
she  left  the  stage  he  perceived  that  perhaps  unawares,  per- 
haps purposely,  she  had  dropped  her  card-case.  Picking 
it  up,  he  let  himself  out  and  turned  into  the  side  street 
which  she  had  taken.  She  was  already  going  up  the  steps 
of  a  house  close  by,  when  he  ran  lightly  up  after  her — her 
perfumes  floating  down  to  greet  him — and  lifting  his  hat, 
he  held  out  the  dainty  trifle:  ''I  beg  your  pardon, 
Madam,  but  I  believe  you  dropped  this  in  the  stage  just 
now. ' ' 

"  Oh  !--did  I  ? — In  another  minute  I  should  have 
missed  it  very  much,  as  I  have  come  here  to  make  a  cere- 
monious call.    Thank  you  extremely !  "  smiling  and  color- 


200  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ing  and  bending  expressive  eyes  upon  him  as  she  took  it. 
(The  English  **  Thanks  very  much"  had  not  yet  crossed 
the  Atlantic.) 

'^But  surely  you  will  give  me  a  card  out  of  it  as  a 
souvenir?"  said  he,  half  reproachfully.  She  appeared  to 
hesitate.  "■  At  least  let  me  offer  you  one  of  mine  ?  "  again 
lifting  his  hat  as  he  handed  one  to  her. 

She  read  it — "  Henry  Ward  Beveridge,''  and  recognized 
the  surname  as  one  prominent  in  New  York  for  wealth  and 
position. 

' '  Since  you  have  so  kindly  prevented  my  losing  all  my 
cards,  I  suppose  you  have  almost  a  right  to  one,""  granted 
she  in  her  very  sweetest  manner,  while  smilingly  holding 
out  the  card-case. 

''That's  right!  "  said  he,  encouragingly,  as  he  helped 
himself;  then  reading  aloud — "  'Mrs.  David  Hcnue,  Mon- 
tague House,  Brooklyfif'  " — with  the  utmost  assurance  he 
looked  straight  at  her  with  his  olive-grey  eyes,  and  added, 
— ''  and  when  may  I  call  on  Mrs.  Howe?  " 

' '  '  Call '  ?  —  Mr.  —  'Beveridge '  —  is  it  ?  "  questioned 
Fanny,  examining  his  card  again ;  '*  1 — I — you  know  I  do 
not  know  you." 

' '  Not  when  we  have  exchanged  cards  ?  ' ' 

''I'm  afraid  Mr.  Howe  would  hardly  consider  us  ac- 
quaintances. 

"  Ask  him  what  he  thinks?  "  said  Beveridge,  "  and  I'll 
call  to-morrow  to  know  his  answer. ' ' 

"Oh,  no!   not  to-morrow." 

"Next  Friday,  then?" 

"  You  need  not.     I  shall  not  be  at  home." 

"  Very  well.  I'll  only  have  the  pleasure  of  leavin'  my 
ard  the  day  after  to-morrow.      But  I  know  you  will  relent ' 


iVElF  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  20l 

I  know  you  won't  be  eruel !  "  and  lifting  his  hat  with  a 
gay,  audacious  look  that  took  Fanny  by  storm,  he  dis- 
appeared round  the  corner,  saying  to  himself — ''  Gad,  a 
neat,  allurin'  little  woman!"  (He  had  a  taking  way, 
this  young  man,  of  dropping  most  of  his  final  gs.) 

Fanny  immediately  confided  her  fascinating  adventure 
to  Mrs.  Belnap  and  asked  her  advice.  ''If  he  calls,  tell 
Mr.  Howe  that  he  is  an  old  childish  acquaintance  of 
mine,"  said  her  friend,  "and  that  I  introduced  you. 
Make  up  anything      He'll  never  suspect !  " 

Almost  to  her  surprise,  for  she  feared  that  a  visit  from 
such  a  social  phoenix  was  almost  too  good  to  be  true, 
Fanny's  omnibus-hero  really  appeared  the  next  day  but 
one,  and  of  course  found  her  in  her  prettiest  toilette  and 
most  persuasive  smiles.  She  made  all  the  pretence  in  the 
world  of  not  expecting  him,  not  a  word  of  which,  natural- 
ly, he  believed. 

Thence  began  a  comradeship,  for  such  only  at  first  it 
was,  which  far  more  than  realized  Fanny's  wildest  dreams. 
Nothing  can  be  more  delightful  than  a  devoted  and  con- 
genial companion  whose  mere  notice  would  have  been  a 
distinct  compliment.  Fanny  very  soon  discovered  that  her 
new  acquaintance  was  a  social  personage  and  very  rich  as 
well  ;  and  that  he  should  honor  her  own  complete  obscur- 
ity by  calls  and  attentions,  she  felt  was  fairyland  luck  in- 
deed. For  the  moment  her  cup  of  life  was  rapturously 
full.  Extraordinary  to  think,  there  had  suddenly  dropped 
into  it  a  young  Croesus  who  knew  everybody,  who  had 
been  everywhere,  and  who  had  nothing  to  do  but  enjoy 
nimself  and  minister  by  his  presence  and  his  purse  to  the 
enjoyment  of  others.  The  aroma  of  those  unforgettable 
days  when  Harvey  Thayer  had  lounged  through  the  sum- 


202  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

mer  hours  with  her  in  Belmont  came  back,  and  as  formerly 
with  him,  so  now  with  Beveridge,  she  felt  that  docility 
and  restfulness  which  only  those  few  bestow  on  their 
fellows  who  have  a  large  margin,  a  surplus,  a  reserve  force 
of  one  or  more  of  the  four  things — money,  position, 
beauty,  talent — for  which  all  of  us  long  and  which  so  few 
of  us  possess. 

On  his  part  the  young  man  was  not  ill-pleased  to  be 
occasionally  seen  by  his  men  friends  with  such  a  pretty 
and  taking  and  perfectly  dressed  young  woman.  ''Who 
is  she?  "  they  inquired,  and  after  they  had  found  out,  it 
perhaps  added  still  further  to  his  satisfaction  to  be  aware 
that  they  put  the  worst  construction  on  his  association 
with  the  little  pink-cheeked  matron.  He  knew  that  a 
rich  man  who  dares  to  be  a  Lothario  is  not  more  envied 
than  admired  by  many  of  his  fellows  who  yet  have  not  the 
moral  audacity  to  emulate  his  crimes. 

But  Fanny's  new  friend  was  hardly  a  Lothario;  at 
least,  he  was  not  yet  an  active  one.  He  quickly  divined 
exactly  what  a  woman  was — ^just  how  virtuous  and  just 
how  lacking  in  virtue.  But  it  was  rather  his  pride,  his 
American  "code,",  not  to  lead  a  woman  on.  He  saw 
that  Fanny  and  Mrs.  Belnap,  howeyer  appearances  were 
against  them,  had  as  yet  no  experience  in  irremediable 
evil.  Though  they  seemed  on  the  downward  road,  he 
knew  that  they  were  unconscious  of  it  themselves.  He 
sometimes  thought,  with  a  dark  smile,  that  probably  he 
should  one  day  meet  one  of  them  at  the  bottom  of  the 
descent,  but  he  had  neither  wish  nor  intention  to  hasten 
the  catastrophe. 

''Give  a  certain  type  of  woman  rope  enough,  and  she 
will   certainly   hang  herself  in  the  end  without  any  re- 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  203 

sponsibility  on  your  part,"  was  an  accepted  maxim  of  his 
world,  and  it  sufficed  him.  However  rapid  the  pace 
might  be  at  which  a  woman  were  going,  though  he  would 
keep  well  up,  he  would  never,  in  what  he  considered  the 
despicable  manner  of  European  men,  urge  and  stimulate 
her  toward  the  desperate  goal.  Just  as  far  as  he  judged 
she  wanted  to  go,  he  would  accompany  her,  but  no 
farther — and  this  he  thought  being  a  man  of  honor. 

He  forgot  that  the  very  "giving  a  woman  the  rope  " 
constituted  his  own  part  of  the  dread  responsibility.  No 
unfallen  woman  ever  "  wants"  to  proceed  to  extremities. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  probable  that  no  such  woman,  any 
more  than  the  Wall  Street  speculators  we  daily  read  of, 
ever  frankly  faces  the  possibility  of  her  own  ruin — ever 
permits  herself  to  question,  even,  whether  the  man  she 
cares  for  is  capable  of  trying  for  it  !  The  man  can  always 
guage  the  precipice  near  which  a  woman  is  fooling,  be- 
cause that  precipice  is  himself;  the  woman,  seldom.  If 
he  push  her  over,  he  is  of  course  guilty.  If  he  let  her 
stray  too  near  the  slippery  edge  which  he  knows  must 
eventually  fail  her,  he  is  guilty  also.  "Beveridge's  honor, 
in  short,  like,  that  of  many  men  where  women  are  con- 
cerned, was  simply  no  honor  at  all ; — true  honor  being  as 
incapable  of  hazarding  that  priceless  possession  in  another, 
of  whichever  sex,  as  it  is  of  sacrificing  its  own  ! 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

A    *<MAN    OF    THE    WORLD.** 

Henry  Ward  Beveridge  was  a  rich  Baltimore  orphan, 
nearly  related  to  the  New  York  Beveridges — of  whom 
Europe  had  taken  possession  in  boyhood  and  thickened 
all  his  vdins  with  the  narcotic  poison  of  her  three  thousand 
years.  He  had  been  left  to  the  guardianship  of  his 
father's  most  trusted  business  friends,  and  these  gentle- 
men, ignorant  or  unmindful  of  Jefferson's  golden  advice 
against  foreign  education  for  American  youth,  had  thought 
to  do  the  best  thing  for  their  ward  in  keeping  him  at 
boarding-schools  on  the  continent  until  he  was  fluent  in 
German  and  French,  then  placing  him  for  a  time  at 
Phillip's  Academy  at  Exeter,  New  Hampshire,  and  finally 
getting  him  graduated  at  Harvard. 

From  twelve  to  twenty-two  made  in  all  twelve  years — 
twelve  tender  and  impressionable  years  which  he  had 
spent  almost  exclusively  in  the  society  of  boys  and  youths 
of  his  own  age.  In  some  of  his  college  vacations  he  saw 
aunts  and  girl-cousins  in  their  homes;  but  his  familiar 
knowledge  of  the  opposite  sex  was  limited  to  the  expensive 
unfortunates  to  whom  his  large  allowance  and  great  ex- 
pectations had  very  early  exposed  him.  Why  not?  His 
English,  French,  German  and  Russian  schoolmates  of 
rank  and  wealth,  mere  babes  in  their  teens  though  they 
were,  had  their  mistresses,  and  an  American  minor  left  to 


A'EI^F  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  205 

his  own  guidance  in  Europe  must  be  expected  to  do  as 
European  minors  do.  When  he  left  Harvard  he  knew  no 
more  of  the  undergraduate  curriculum  than  had  sufficed  to 
pass  him  through  at  the  foot  of  his  class,  but  having  be- 
gun so  very  early  to  "■  see  life  "  and  to  ''sow  wild  oats," 
he  flattered  himself,  as  men  generally  do  who  have  served 
a  similar  apprenticeship,  that  he  ''  knew  women." 

And  how  deceived  they  are  in  that  belief!  They  do 
get  to  know  debased,  blighted  and  distorted  women,  but 
are  nearly  as  ignorant  of  womanhod  as  ladies  who  should 
be  acquainted  only  with  untaught  and  criminal  men  would 
be  of  manhood.  One  of  the  most  thorough-going  flirts 
and  libertines  of  contemporary  American  society  lamented 
toward  the  close  of  his  life  of  conquest  that  he  had  not 
cultivated  the  simple  friendship  of  "sweet  women." 
Blinded  by  sense,  he  had  ever  sought  to  strike  but  one  chord 
of  the  thousand-stringed  harp  that  the  beautiful,  equally 
with  the  stronger  sex  really  is,  and  guessed  too  late  of  tht 
manifold  harmonies  he  had  passed  unsuspected  by. 

At  Harvard,  the  Beveridge  money  and  its  owner's  per- 
fect waltzing  speedily  gave  him  the  entree  into  the  best 
Cambridge  and  Boston  circles,  and  aristocratic  belles 
threw  their  shining  nets  across  his  path  even  before  he 
graduated.  But  with  the  life  he  led  below  the  surface,  to 
fall  in  love  above  it  was  at  this  time  impossible.  He 
turned  on  every  girl  he  met  a  lethargic  eye,  feeling  kindly 
to  those  who  showed  kindness  to  him,  provided  they  had 
social  position  and  consideration,  and  doing  a  little  flirt- 
ing wqth  two  or  three  at  a  time  of  the  most  attractive;  but 
if  even  a  pretty  girl  without  much  of  either  asked  him  at 
her  own  house  to  lead  the  german,  he  would  calmly  do  it 
and  never  once  take  her  out  at  her  own  party  !     Beveridge 


206  JV£PV  YORK:   A   SY MP  HO  MFC  STUDY. 

was  thoroughly  ^'brutal,''  as  the  French  say.  He  felt  him- 
self immensely,  and  adored  to  dominate  his  fellow-beings 
simply  because  he  was  ' '  Ward  Beveridge. ' '  How  much 
was  magnetism,  and  how  much  was  money,  who  can  say? 
Magnetism  he  certainly  had,  but  could  he  have  asserted  it 
as  unflinchingly  as  he  did,  lacking  his  solid  consciousness 
of  his  great  fortune  ?  There  is  an  inspiring  little  fiction 
that  ''knowledge  is  power."  Let  Solomon's  ''poor  wise 
man"  declare  how  often  he  can  overtop  in  spirit  the 
ignorant  rich  one  who  possesses  the  "  power"  transmuted 
into  its  only  valid  earthly  expression  ! 

Pleasant  and  stimulating,  but  superficial  Boston  sufficed 
Beveridge  through  college  only; — "pleasant"  Boston  for 
the  rich,  I  should  explain,  for  without  much  money  or 
much  assurance  the  stranger  may  find  little  pleasantness  in 
that  sometimes  stony  ground.  Beveridge,  having  a  super- 
abundance of  both,  was  proportionally  loaded  with  atten- 
tions during  his  junior  and  senior  years ;  but  by  his  Class- 
Day  he  had  outgrown  his  narrow  and  easy  conquest,  and 
was  ready  for  the  dashing  summer  at  Newport  which  fol- 
lowed, where  a  Boston  belle  from  the  despised  "South 
End,"  having  captivated  and  married  the  high-born  Rob 
De  Windt  of  New  York,  was  turning  the  heads  of  every- 
body and  turning  her  own  life  upside  down  at  the  same 
time. 

As  in  Boston,  society  in  Newport  unrolled  itself  enthu- 
siastically before  Beveridge' s  golden  pedestal,  and  it 
would  have  been  nothing  to  him  to  storm  New  York  the 
ensuing  winter,  but  that  he  very  unexpectedly  flew  off  to 
Paris  as  an  attache  of  the  American  legation. 

In  the  fascinating  world-capital  and  its  glittering  im- 
perial  court,   the  rich  American  took    his  post-graduate 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  207 

course  as  man-of-the-world  accoitipli.  His  official  position, 
reinforced  by  his  languages,  his  dancing,  and  of  course  his 
money,  opened  much  to  him.  A  school  friend  with  whom 
he  had  been  intimate  at  Vevay  was  now  a  great  swell  at- 
tached to  the  Russian  legation.  Prince  Troubetskoi,  for 
so  was  he  named,  was  disposed  to  be  excessively  friendly, 
and  Beveridge  both  felt  and  showed  himself  as  princely  as 
he.  This  x\merican  had  early  concluded  that  rank  was  not 
only  the  "guinea's  stamp,"  but  the  guinea's  self,  and  that  at 
bottom  an  aristocracy  never  is  and  never  can  be  anything 
but  a  plutocracy.  Rich  as  he  was,  he  intended,  as  soon 
as  he  had  *'  had  his  fling,"  to  devote  himself  to  becoming 
a  great  deal  richer.  With  his  actual  and  potential  posses- 
sions in  his  mind,  therefore,  from  the  beginning  he  held 
himself  with  the  proudest,  and  his  very  way  of  entering  a 
room  full  of  titles  and  decorations  and  looking  straight 
about  him  as  if  he  owped  everything  in  it,  stamped  him  a 
social  king  and  won  him  half  the  social  battle. 

The  other  half  was  secured  by  his  lavish  expenditures — 
especially  at  the  gaming-table.  He  was  very  cool  about 
this.  He  knew  that  the  prestige  and  position  among  titled 
youth  to  which  he  aspired  were  impossible  if  he  did  not 
gamble  freely.  He  resolved  that  if  necessary  he  would 
lose  yearly  a  third  of  his  great  income  at  cards  and  bet- 
ting— would  spend  another  third  in  lavish  living,  and  the 
final  third  he  proposed  to  lay  up. 

He  established  himself  in  a  little  hotel  on  the  Champs 
Elysees,  where  he  kept  open  house  for  Troubetskoi  and 
his  friends.  He  was  seen  constantly  at  dinners,  balls  and 
functions;  he  made  a  point  of  theatre-going;  he  bought  a 
large  yacht ;  he  devoted  himself  to  horses  and  hunting 
until  he  earned  the  coveted  rank  of  a  *'  thorough  sport,"  ^ 


2o8  NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  in  every  other  respect  l^e  followed  so  faithfully  the 
ideals  about  him  that  during  his  Paris  sojourn  he  had 
"  done  all  those  things  that  he  ought  not  to  have  done, 
and  there  was  no  health  in  him  " — for  he  had  even  per- 
mitted to  himself  the  most  daring  heaven-defiance  of  all — 
an  intrigue  with  a  married  woman! 

She  was  a  soft  fascinating  creature,  ten  years  older  than 
Bevefidge,  and  a  social  star.     She  was  unhappily  mated, 
but  had  found  her  tragedy  in  the  fickleness  of  a  secret 
lover  rather  than  in  the  open  aberrations  of  her  high-born 
husband.    The  atmosphere  of  her  salon  and  her  own  sub- 
tle, musical  self  were  so  delightful  to  Beveridge   (for  he 
loved  music)  that  he  left  her  in  no  doubt  as  to  his  chival- 
rous admiration,  and  with  the  very  unexpected  result  to 
both  of  them  that  the  lady  fell  deeply  in  love  with  him. 
The  incense  and  the  charming  millionaire  attentions  of 
this  youthful  heart  gave  her  own  worn  and  discouraged  one 
new  life.    But  in  turn  the  knowledge  of  his  brilliant  con- 
quest awoke  in  Beveridge  a  tumult  which  in  that  civiHza- 
tion  could  have  only  one  ending.     His  romantic  homage 
forsook  its  sweet  upper  level  and  swept  down  those  black 
and  tortuous  gorges  of  unlawful  passion  from  whence  it  is 
the  last  improbability  that  in  this  life  any  young  man's 
soul  can  find  its  wings  again. 

So  admirably  prudent  were  the  pair,  however,  that  the 
affair  was  never  even  suspected  in  the  hot-bed  of  scandal 
in  which  they  lived.  The  Draconian  eleventh  command- 
ment of  this  woman's  world  simply  was — "  Thou  shall  not 
be  found  out"  and  Beveridge  religiously  regarded  it.  To 
accomplish  their  difficult  meetings  was  the  breathless 
interest  of  both  their  Hves;  to  her,  all  she  lived  for;  to 
him,  but  the  keenest  of  many  distractions,  and  one  from 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  209 

the  risk  and  consequent  intensity  of  which  he  took  many 
vacations  in  the  shape  of  hunting  and  other  trips. 

But  their  consciences  did  not  trouble  them.  She  prac- 
tically knew  no  better,  and  he  considered  it  was  all 
a  part  of  the  life  ''over  there."  —  ''Their  standards 
are  different ;  we  must  not  judge  them  by  our  rules ;  in 
Rome  do  as  the  Romans  do;  women  can't  be  delivered 
like  cattle  by  their  parents  to  their  husbands,  and  not  feel 
it ;  they  must  have  some  expression  for  their  affections ; 
the  men  admit  as  much  in  their  talk  among  themselves ; 
in  fact,  they  prefer  it,  for  it  gives  far  more  variety  and 
excitement  to  life;  if  they  didn't  like  it  they  would  change 
their  customs;  etc.,  etc."  Thus  Beveridge  juggled  with 
himself,  and  so  true  it  is,  as  the  Vedas  awfully  express  it, 
that  "Repeated  sin  impairs  the  judgment;  when  the 
judgment  is  impaired  sin  is  repeated  !  ' '  Having  begun 
wrong  and  kept  wrong  in  his  relations  with  the  other  sex, 
Beveridge  had  got  as  far  as  actually  living  in  adultery  and 
calling  it  "  the  custom  of  the  country," — ^just  as  in  India 
or  China  or  Japan  he  and  his  peers  would  equally  have 
kept  harems  and  called  that  "  the  custom  of  the  country." 

Meantime,  America  and  her  women  still  remained  some- 
thing apart  in  his  mind,  and  now  after  a  long  absence  his 
affairs  requiring  his  return,  he  had  domiciled  himself  for 
a  time  in  New  York.  It  was  proper,  Beveridge  thought, 
to  have  a  foothold  in  one's  own  land,  and  in  a  house  at 
the  back  of  the  Fairfax  Hotel  on  Broadway,  with  en- 
trances both  from  one  of  the  hotel  corridors  and  from 
the  side  street,  he  had  fitted  up  with  the  rugs,  por- 
tieres, pictures  and  bric-a-brac  he  had  brought  from 
abroad,  a  bachelor's  apartment  that  was  a  dream.  An 
English  friend  who  had  lived  with  him  in  Paris,  and  who 


2IO  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

loved  nothing  better  than  the  pleasure  of  buying  in  ac- 
cordance with  his  own  consummate  taste,  had  selected 
most  of  his  belongings  for  him,  and  down  to  each  tea- 
spoon, even,  every  object  was  a  separate  thought.  As  for 
Beveridge's  wines  and  brandies,  nothing  surpassing  them 
could  be  brought  together  by  mere  money — and  those  he 
had  selected  himself. 

Flying  about  between  New  York,  Boston,  Washington 
and  the  intermediate  cities,  and  planning  a  hunting  expe- 
dition to  the  plains  for  some  month  in  the  future,  Beve- 
ridge  found  himself  at  first  quite  sufficiently  amused.  His 
own  countrymen  and  countrywomen  diverted  him.  He 
declared  that  they  puzzled  him. 

''What  are  they  all  strivin'  for,"  he  pretended  to  won- 
der, "  instead  of  simply  settlin'  down  on  their  big  incomes 
and  enjoyin'  themselves?  They've  got  to  be  ''  John  Doe 
and  Richard  Roe ' '  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  and  why 
don' t  they  give  themselves  airs  on  that,  as  the  old  Romans 
did  on  Roman  citizenship  and  looked  down  on  kings  and 
queens  with  contempt?  A  Roman,  man  or  woman,  would 
no  more  marry  anybody  not  a  Roman  than  I  would  a  nig- 
ger !  As  long  as  it  isn't  a  ''  Prince  "  Astor  or  a  "  Duke  " 
Belmont,  obliged  to  live  up  to  his  rank,  w^hat  difference 
does  it  make  whose  grandfather  came  over  first  or  who 
gives  the  costliest  entertainments?  In  what  other  country 
on  earth  could  a  man  be  worth  fifty  millions  and  live  in  a 
brick  box  on  Fifth  Avenue  and  hardly  give  a  dinner  party 
a  year  and  yet  be  considered  a  decent  member  of  society  ? 
So  much  better  off  we  are  without  that  beastly  foreign  in- 
cubus called  ''family  !  "  Such  swarms  of  shabby  genteel 
relations  rich  people  have  over  there,  poor  devils,  meekly 
pickin'  up  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  their  master's  table — 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  21 1 

always  mutely  beggin',  like  span' els  !  When  I  come  home 
and  find  everybody  so  independent  and  well  off,  hanged  if 
I  don't  think  society  Americans  are  fools  to  be  so  apolo- 
getic and  aspirin'  to  lords  and  lineage  !  " 

So  Beveridge  held  forth  at  his  club.  But  was  he  sin- 
cere? Was  he  indeed  an  American?  Would  he  have 
respected  himself  so  much,  wanting  his  long  list  of  titled 
and  high-born  friends?  Certainly  he  had  spared  nothing 
to  gain  them.  Moreover,  his  money  placed  him  in  the 
''  leisure  class  "  which  has  always  ruled  the  Old  World  and 
which  the  New,  with  its  ''trusts"  and  its  enormous  for- 
tunes so  wickedly,  cruelly,  and  as  I  believe,  unconstitu- 
tionally willed  to  eldest  sons,  is  creating  as  fast  as  it  can. 

Of  this  class  the  business  is  pleasure;  its  work,  play. 
But  innocent  pleasures  only  satisfy  as  the  rest  or  the  recre- 
ation after  toil.  As  the  serious  interest  of  life  they  are 
not  intense  enough.  It  is  indeed  a  horrid  truth  that  the 
sensation  of  pleasure  is  not  attained  by  the  mere  man  of 
pleasure  unless  at  the  expense  of  the  keenest  opposite  of 
pleasure  in  another  consciousness — that  his  unemployed 
energy  drives  him  to  find  his  satisfying  enjoyment  only  in 
causing  some  living  thing  to  suffer — some  living  animal  to 
be  the  victim  of  his  ''sports,"  some  living  woman  to  be 
the  victim  of  his  wiles !  To  be  thus,  however,  is  to  be, 
not  a  man,  but  a  beast  of  prey ;  and  such,  in  fact,  was  the 
rich,  the  strong,  the  sought-for  and  thoroughly  self-satis- 
fied Henry  Ward  Beveridge. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

EDUCATION    TELLS. 

Fifty  years  ago  American  pleasure-seekers  had  yet  a 
very  long  way  to  bring  their  country  before  she  echoed, 
as  she  does  to-day,  the  French  standards  in  what  they 
esteem  diversion,  and  Beveridge  accordingly  was  begin- 
ning to  find  his  as  yet  puritanic  native  land  rather  insipid 
and  dull,  when,  as  we  have  seen,  he  encountered  the  pretty 
and  taking  Mrs.  David  Howe. 

For  the  time  his  ennui  was  stayed.  While  women  never 
really  enjoy  men  who  are  beneath  them,  men  rarely  enjoy 
women  who  are  anything  else,  and  though  Beveridge  would 
have  thought  a  duchess  none  too  good  for  him  to  marry, 
as  a  companion  he  was  hugely  content  with  this  very  fem- 
inine little  nobody,  and  found  her  the  ''best  company," 
as  the  saying  is,  in  the  world.  She  was  pretty  to  look  at 
and  entertaining  to  hear,  quick  and  incisive  in  her  com- 
ments on  other  people,  smiling  and  flattering  to  himself — 
always  deliciously  neat  and  always  charmingly  adorned. 
What  could  a  man  want  more?  And  she  wasn't  in  the 
least  afraid.  She  was  willing  to  go  anywhere  with  him 
any  day  but  Sunday,  always  provided  her  friend,  Mrs.  Bel- 
nap,  were  along  and  that  she  could  get  back  to  her  hotel 
in  time  to  be  dressed  to  receive  Mr.  Howe. 

For  Fanny  didn't  believe  Beveridge  meant  her  any 
harmc     She  knew  there  were  edged  tools  in  the  world  in 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  213 

the  guise  of  fascinating  men,  but  this  heavy,  dark-browed 
young  gentleman  couldn't  be  one  of  them!  He  was 
simply  *'nice," — not  dangerously  "romantic"  at  all. 
Still,  it  was  best  to  be  on  the  safe  side.  The  chummy 
Mrs.  Belnap  lived  in  two  pretty  little  rooms,  a  parlor  and 
hall  bedroom,  on  the  second  floor  of  a  high-class  boarding- 
house — only  the  back  rooms,  'tis  true,  but  they  were  sunny 
and  home-like.  She  had  an  adorer  who  presented  himself 
there  every  day  or  two,  and  who,  being  too  poor  to  marry 
and  with  not  health  enough  to  work,  was  at  her  service 
whenever  she  wanted  him.  With  these  two  to  chape- 
rone  anything  jolly  that  might  come  along,  Fanny  judged 
there  could  be  no  harm  in  having  a  little  fun  in  this  dull 
world — an  excursion  behind  Mr.  Beveridge's  horses — often 
a  lunch  or  a  matinee, — a  very  few  times  an  evening  theatre 
and  an  after-theatre  supper,  when  for  the  rest  of  the  night 
Fanny  shared  Mrs.  Belnap' s  rooms,  Mrs.  Belnap  had  an 
aunt  living  over  in  Orange,  New  Jersey,  and  so  Fanny  was 
able  to  say  that  she  and  Georgie  "  had  spent  the  night" 
with  this  lady  in  that  charming  villa-town. 

"Hotel  life  />  so  public  and  yet  so  cramped-up,"  she 
would  complain — "and  I  do  hate  it  so  !  I  should  die  if 
I  couldn't  now  and  then  get  a  glimpse  of  a  real  home 
again,  and  it  is  so  sweet  and  quiet  over  at  old  Mrs.  Bel- 
nap's!  Such  delicious  home  cooking,  too,  and  I  do  so 
despise  a  hotel  table.  I  declare,  I  could  hardly  tear  my- 
self away  after  breakfast  this  morning.  Dear  ! — I  wonder 
if  I  ever  shall  have  a  home  of  my  own  in  New  York 
again?  " — all  of  which  was  naturally  so  very  pleasant  for 
Mr.  Howe  to  hear  ! 

Fanny  was  very  explicit  in  stating  to  her  family  and  ac- 
quaintance what   a   necessity   of  her   existence  was   her 


214 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 


friend,  Georgie  Belnap.  '*  What  my  darling  sister  Julia 
was  to  me  no  one  knows — nor, how  I  miss  her!  I  always 
leaned  on  her.  She  was  the  eldest,  you  know,  and  such 
strength  of  mind !  Somehow  Georgie  takes  her  place  as 
no  one  else  does  or  can,  and  I  must  see  her  often  !  "  Ac- 
cordingly Mrs.  Belnap  came  over  to  Brooklyn  at  least 
once  a  week  and  Fanny  went  to  New  York  much  oftener. 
She  was,  of  course,  as  careful  as  possible  not  to  excite 
Jeannette's  or  Mr.  Howe's  suspicions  as  to  how  she  spent 
her  many  hours  of  absence  from  her  little  family.  Not 
because  in  her  own  mind  she  was  doing  anything  wrong. 
This  consideration  did  not  occur  to  her.  She  was  simply 
doing  what  she  wanted  to  da — ^just  as  she  had  all  her  life. 
But  * '  X)avid  might  not  understand ;  he  was  so  tied  to  the 
office  and  his  home,  and  always  had  been ;  he  was  such  an 
old  sober-sides — poor,  dear  old  Davy  ! — -and  Jeannette  was 
so  exactly  like  him,  etc.,  etc."  In  their  hearing  she  would 
speculate  for  ten  minutes  together  as  to  the  chances  of 
Beveridge  and  Mrs.  Belnap  getting  engaged ;  declaring  she 
*' hoped  they  would;  it  would  be  the  most  magnificent 
match  for  Georgie;  she  thought  Beveridge  really  liked 
Georgie  and  she  was  doing  all  she  could  to  encourage  it." 
Mr.  Howe,  faithful  heart,  little  suspected  the  wolf 
that  had  entered  his  fold.  Beveridge  appeared  at  the 
hotel  about  once  a  fortnight,  and  twice  he  invited  the 
Howes  and  Mrs.  Belnap  to  dine  with  him  in  New  York  at 
Delmonico's  and  go  to  the  theatre  afterwards.  Looking 
upon  him  rather  as  Mrs.  Belnap* s  than  his  wife's  social 
property,  the  husband  thought  Beveridge  a  '  *  very  gentle- 
manly ' '  though  by  no  means  brilliant  young  man,  and  felt 
quite  pleased  at  such  distinguished  attentions  from  so  aris- 
tocratic an  acquaintance. 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  215 

Mamma  Dexter  was  wild  with  excitement  and  hope  for 
Josephine  when  the  mighty  Beveridge  sun  first  rose  upon 
her  narrow  horizon,  and  when  she  discovered  that  Fanny 
and  Mrs.  Belnap  made  and  kept  engagements  with  him 
without  including  the  only  unmarried  Dexter — (Mrs. 
Dexter' s  sharp  eyes  were  not  deceived,  however  others 
were),  she  was  disgusted,  and  began  as  much  of  an  expos- 
tulation as  her  obligations  to  the  Howes  would  permit. 
But  in  her  imperious  way  Fanny  silenced  her  with — 
^'Mother,  Mr.  Beveridge  isn't  a  marrying  man,  and  Jo 
might  as  well  cry  for  the  moon  as  for  him.  He's 
Georgie's  and  my  friend,  and  we  just  want  you  to  under- 
stand— *  Hands  off ! ' — Jo  can  find  her  own  beaux,  as  I 
did.  I'm  sure  I  gave  her  chances  enough — staying  in  my 
house  in  New  York  winter  after  winter — compared  w^ith 
what  Julia  and  I  had." 

And  so  for  a  little  swiftly-speeding  time — for  the  apex 
of  human  happiness,  like  every  other  apex,  is  a  vanishing 
point — Fanny  floated  confident  and  serene  on  a  summer- 
tide  of  pleasure  which  was  after  her  own  heart  in  every- 
thing save  that  evening  theatres  and  late  suppers,  those 
crowning  delights  of  true  Bohemia,  could  but  very,  very 
rarely  be  ventured  on  ! 

Beveridge  was  vastly  entertained  by  the  affair.  For 
one  thing,  it  piqued  the  handsome  demi-mondaine  he  had 
brought  over  horribly — made  her  anxious  and  uneasy  and 
very  insecure  of  her  ground ;  but  as  she  was  a  stranger 
in  a  strange  land,  she  did  not  dare  to  insist  on  an  explan- 
ation which  might  have  resulted  in  a  break  with  her 
despotic  millionaire.  She  need  not  have  been  afraid. 
Beveridge  would  not  have  thrown  her  on  the  world  un- 
cared  for.     He   was   not  base  enough  for  that.     But  he 


2l6  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

perceived  her  suspense  and  fear,  and  calmly  let  her  fret 
silently  on.  There  was  such  a  di;amatic  contrast  between 
her  apprehensive  eyes  and  her  forced  gayety  and  smiles, 
and  between  both  these  and  Fanny's  cool  and  easy  confi- 
dence !  He  found  a  sort  of  luxury  in  the  part  he  made 
her  play.  Like  the  absolute  silent  obedience  and  impas- 
siveness  of  his  valet,  it  was  one  of  the  expressions  of  his 
power — of  his  ability  to  use  his  fellow-beings  to  suit 
himself 

As  to  Fanny,  he  suspected  that  half  her  pleasure  in  him 
came  from  the  money  that  he  lavished  for  her  little  recrea- 
tions— but  he  was  quite  willing  to  be  made  use  of.  He 
was  always  wondering  what  she  would  venture  next,  and 
for  the  sake  of  finding  out,  he  let  her  do  what  she  liked 
with  him  in  the  amused  temper  with  which  a  grown  man 
will  let  a  toddling  baby  take  hold  of  his  big  finger  and 
walk  him  at  its  little  will  about  the  room.  They  say  the 
anacondas  often  lie  quiet  in  their  cages  for  hours  while 
the  lively  rabbits  that  are  to  be  their  dinners  run  all  over 
them  and  the  place.  As  an  unmarried  girl,  Beveridge 
would  not  have  bestowed  a  thought,  hardly  a  glance,  upon 
Fanny.  Her  attraction,  then,  must  have  consisted  solely 
in  the  fact  that  she  was  married,  and  that  in  being  with 
him  she  was  running  the  risk  of  an  awful  catastrophe  of 
which  he,  as  the  professional  pleasure-seeker,  in  search  of 
and  actually  requiring  sensations,  was  simply  awaiting  the 
event. 

But  he  refrained  from  defining  to  himself  that  this  was 
what  he  wanted  and  expected  of  his  reckless  country- 
woman, quite  as  carefully  as  she  cloaked  from  her  con- 
science the  fact  that  she  was  deceiving  her  husband. 
Beveridge  preferred  to  pretend  that  Fanny  was  to  him  a 


NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  217 

''Study" — an  interesting  "American"  study.  "Fact  is, 
a  man  never  knows  a  country,  a  race,  until  he  has  seen  its 
women  as  they  really  are,''  remarked  he,  philosophically, 
to  a  friend  one  day  while  discussing  the  sex  ! 

It  must  be  owned,  too,  that  Fanny's  own  hardness 
somewhat  contributed  to  his  unscrupulousness  toward  her. 
She  was  such  a  thorough  Philistine  !  She  judged  every- 
body and  everything  with  a  materialism  and  ruthlessness 
that  even  outdid  his  own,  and  which  at  once  disgusted 
and  held  him.  The  reverse  of  the  alchemist  who  fain 
would  turn  everything  to  gold — Fanny's  touch  transmuted 
everything  to  dross. 

One  Sunday  afternoon  when  Beveridge  had  been  dining 
with  the  Howes  at  Montague  House  and  they  were  now 
smoking  and  talking,  Mr.  Howe  handed  about  the  room,  a 
relic  of  the  recent  war,  which  had  been  given  him  by  an 
ex-army  chaplain.  It  was  a  letter  addressed  to  a  Con- 
federate officer  who  was  supposed  to  have  been  killed,  and 
it  ran  as  follows  : 

My  precious  Edward — 

Your  note  of  the  17th  saying  that  you  had  come  out  safe  from  that 
last  dreadful  battle  has  just  reached  me.  Thank  God  for  it !  and  thank 
heaven  I  did  not  know  of  the  fighting  at  the  time,  or  I  should  have 
been  simply  frantic  1  I  hope  and  pray  you  may  not  have  another  en- 
gagement this  campaign.  Only  a  few  words  to  her  darling  boy,  because 
paper  is  getting  so  scarce !  We  are  all  well,  even  your  dear  mother, 
but  Mabel  is  still  perfectly  erushed  by  John's  death.  She  seems  incon- 
solable, and  I  don't  know  what  to  say  to  her,  for  in  her  place  how  could 
/  bear  it !  I  have  just  been  to  look  at  the  children  sleeping,  and  to 
take  a  kiss  from  them  which  I  put  here  on  the  paper  for  you.  They 
looked  like  two  rose-buds.  I  prayed  for  them  and  for  their  hero-father 
and  for  our  poor  country  and  for  our  sacred  cause  for  a  long  time.  Oh, 
my  own  Edward !  When  I  remember  it  was  you  who  taught  me  to 
pray — who  led  me  to  the  Saviour — how  can  I  love  you  enough  ?     To 


2i8  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Him  I  commit  you — my  Love,  my  All !     O,  may  He  soon  bring  jrou 
back  safe  and  in  triumph  to  your  own,  bwn,  own 

MiLLY. 
Millions  of  kisses  and  loves  from  all ! 

Fanny  read  it  last,  and  as  she  handed  it  back  to  David 
he  asked — '*  Don't  you  think  that  must  have  been  a  sweet 
woman  ?  ' ' 

*'I  never  read  such  stuff,"  said  Fanny;  with  disgust; 
*''her  Marling  boy'  indeed?  A  woman  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  write  to  her  husband  in  such  a  style  as  that ! 
Sickening!  " 

^'Why  to  her  husband  particularly?"  asked  Beveridge 
in  a  soft,  somewhat  meaning  tone. 

''Oh,  I  don't  know,"  answered  Fanny,  carelessly. 

''Perhaps  you  don't  approve  of  love-letters  under  any 
circumstances  ?  ' ' 

"I  certainly  don't  appreciate  them,"  returned  Fanny — 
"I  burnt  up  all  Mr.  Howe's  ages  ago.  When  I  came  to 
look  them  over  I  declare  I  couldn't  imagine  how  I  had 
ever  read  *em  at  all  !  " 

Mr.  Howe's  sensitive  cheek  flushed  painfully,  and  Bev- 
eridge, really  touched  for  him,  came  purposely  to  his 
rescue  with — "Your  taste  is  the  reverse  of  mine,  Mrs. 
Howe;  I'm  sure  /  shouldn't  care  for  love-letters  that 
7£/^;r;/'/ silly  and  soft — more  or  less.  I  always  supposed 
that  was  the  very  idea  of  love-letters." 

"Oh,  no  !''  sniffed  Fanny,  with  infinite  contempt. 

"What  a  hard  little  nut  it  is  !  "  thought  Beveridge  to 
himself;   "I  believe  she's  an  incipient  Lady  Macbeth." 


CHAPTER  XXV. 


THE    BOTTOMLESS    PIT. 


Had  Mrs.  Fanny  Howe  continued  to  stand  as  prudently 
on  guard  with  Ward  Beveridge  as  she  had  begun,  not  long 
would  she  have  enjoyed  the  privileged  society  of  this  great 
swell.  Not  many  weeks  would  have  sufficed  to  surfeit  him 
with  drives  and  lunches  with  three  empty-headed  nobodies, 
simply  because  two  of  them  were  young  and  taking  women, 
and  one  of  them  especially  flattering  to  himself.  Too 
many  others,  much  higher  social  game,  were  courting  his 
attention  for  that,  and  he  was  on  the  point  of  dropping 
his  ''little  Brooklyn  friend"  (for  thus  did  he  catalogue 
Fanny — to  her  horror,  had  she  known  it,  so  entirely  did 
she  think  of  herself  as  a  "  New  Yorker  ")  when  the  flirta- 
tion took  the  turn  toward  the  denouement  which  had  l)een 
his  original  motive  for  the  acquaintance  and  yet  which  he 
theorized  he  was  not  doing  anything  to  bring  about. 

Fanny  had  inherited  her  mother's  special  weakness. 
Her  love  of  dress  was  overpowering,  and  her  secret  ambi- 
tion to  vie  in  Beveridge's  eyes  with  the  fashionable  belles 
of  whom  she  was  always  dying  to  hear  but  of  whom  he 
vouchsafed  but  an  occasional  mention — had  made  it  im- 
possible for  her,  this  particular  season,  to  keep  within  the 
liberal  allowance  made  to  her  by  her  husband.  What  she 
could  not  pay  for  she  charged,  and  when  she  drew  her  al- 


220  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

lowance  she  made  cash  payments  on  her  running  accounts ; 
but  the  deficit  grew  larger  and  larger,  and  at  last  she  had 
reluctantly  to  face  the  hard  fact  that  being  over  five  hund- 
red dollars  behind,  she  could  not  hope  to  make  it  up. 
Yet,  how  to  ask  her  husband  for  it  ?  She  was  as  sure  as 
though  he  told  her,  that  he  had  not  such  a  sum  to  give. 
Neither  he  nor  Jeannette  had  had  a  thread  of  new  clothes 
for  two  years  at  least. 

**What  if  Mr.  Beveridge  should  lend  it  tome?"  was 
Fanny's  incessant  thought.  "  He  is  so  immensely  rich. 
Think  of  it !  Two  or  three  hundred  thousand  dollars  a 
year  at  least !  Five  hundred  is  but  a  drop  in  the  ocean  to 
such  a  man." 

Beveridge  at  last  noticed,  as  she  intended  he  should, 
that  his  usually  light-hearted  friend  was  pensive  and  dis- 
traite. He  wondered  if  she  could  be  falling  in  love  with 
him  and,  almost  expecting  a  declaration,  begged  earnestly 
to  know  what  was  the  matter.  At  first  she  pretended  that 
nothing  would  induce  her  to  tell  him,  but  at  last,  of 
course,  he  prevailed. 

*'I  am  in  debt  five  hundred  dollars,  and  I  daren't  tell 
Mr.  Howe  about  it." 

"■  In  debt  five  hundred  dollars?  Is  that  all — and  you  so 
melancholy?  "  and  he  burst  out  laughing. 

''  It  may  seem  a  trifle  to  you,  Mr.  Beveridge,  with  your 
income,  but  I  assure  you  it's  a  mountain  to  me,"  said 
Fanny,  disconsolately. 

''What  a  molehill  the  mountain  would  become,  Mrs. 
Howe,"  said  he,  with  assumed  reproach,  ''if  you  looked 
upon  me  as  a  friend  and  not  as  an  amusement  merely. ' ' 

"What!  "  said  the  practical  Fanny,  joyfully.  "You 
really  mean  you  would  lend  it  to  me  ?  " 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  221 

Beveridge  was  piqued  at  her  ignoring  the  sentiment  of 
his  question  and  punished  her  by  answering  dryly — ''Of 
course  I  would  lend  it  to  any  friend  with  reasonable  se- 
curity.    How  should  you  propose  to  pay  it  back  ? ' ' 

Fanny's  face  fell  a  little.  ''  Oh,  I'm  going  to  econo- 
mize just  as  close  as  I  can  !  I  shan't  get  anything  new 
this  spring,  or  go  near  the  stores.  I'll  have  my  old  things 
made  over  and  go  up  into  the  country  as  early  as  possible 
and  wear  them  out.  Then,  you  see,  I  could  pay  you  off 
fifty  dollars  every  month  from  my  allowance." 

"  Very  virtuous — and  with  your  tastes  and  habits — ve-ry 
impracticable  resolutions  !  ' '  said  Beveridge. 

''You  think  I  couldn't  keep  my  resolutions,"  answered 
Fanny,  eagerly.  "  You're  mistaken.  When  I  make  up  my 
mind  to  a  thing  I  always  put  it  through," — with  great 
emphasis  on  the  ' '  always. ' ' 

"The  truth  is,"  said  Beveridge,  "I  never  lend  money 
to  a  woman.  But  I'll  give  it  to  )'ou  on  one  very  small 
condition." 

"  One  very  small  condition  ?  "  echoed  Fanny,  anxiously. 

"That  you  will  come  to  m\  rooms  and  get  it." 

"  I  thought  you  wished  to  do  me  a  kindness,  but  I  see 
you  only  want  to  compromise  me,"  said  Fanny,  reddening 
and  indignantly. 

"  That's  just  as  you  choose  to  look  at  it,"  said  Beveridge 
so  firmly  that  he  pronounced  his  final  gs; — "you  know 
a  great  many  women  would  think  they  were  compromising 
themselves  by  simply  sitting  here  and  sipping  chocolate 
with  me  as  you  are  doing  now — to  say  nothing  of  all  the 
other  pleasant  times  we've  had  together  !  " 

"I  never  pretended  to  be  straight-laced.  Sipping 
chocolate  in  the  midst  of  a  crowd,  or  going  on  an  excur- 


2  22  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

sion  with  you  and  Georgie  Belnap,  are  very  different  things, 
Mr.  Beveridge,  from  going  aloVie  to  your  rooms — at  least 
according  to  my  notions  of  propriety. ' ' 

*' O  well !  I  won't  dispute  the  point.  I  suppose  every 
woman  has  to  decide  for  herself  what  is  proper  and  what 
isn't.  I've  asked  you  to  come  and  see  my  rooms  several 
times,  you  know,  and  you  have  always  refused.  I  think 
them  rather  nice  myself,  and  I'd  like  to  know  what  you 
think  \  and  as  you  would  never  come  for  love  I  thought 
I'd  see  whether  you  would  for  money,"  and  he  laughed 
softly.  ^^But  of  course  it  was  only  a  joke.  You  are  not 
so  mercenary  as  I  hoped." 

' '  I  could  do  a  good  deal  for  five  or  six  hundred  dollars 
just  now,  I  confess,"  said  Fanny,  with  a  sigh;  **but  I  fear 
I  could  not  do  that." 

"If  nobody  ever  knew  it,  what  difference  could  it 
make  ? ' '  asked  Beveridge.  (He  did  not  care  a  copper 
whether  she  came  or  not.  He  was  simply  experimenting — 
trying  how  far  she  would  go.) 

**  But  somebody  might  know  it,  and  then  where  should  I 
be?" 

'*  Pooh!  Such  meetings  happen  by  thousands  and  no 
one  is  ever  the  wiser.  I  should  be  so  happy  to  see  you  in 
a  particular  chair  near  the  fire-place  that  I've  pictured  you 
in  so  often  !  " — and  he  looked  smouldering  fire  at  her  from 
under  his  heavy  eyelids. 

"It  seems  so  strange,"  said  Fanny,  evasively,  "that 
you  won't  help  me  generously  and  nobly  and  just  because 
you  are  my  friend,  instead  of  demanding  what  from  a 
married  woman  is  really  more  than  an  equivalent.  You 
lend  a  few  paltry  hundreds,  and  practically  ask  me  to  give 
my  reputation." 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  223 

*'  I  wonder  how  much  she  thinks  she  has  left  as  it  is?  " 
thought  Beveridge,  '  *  excepting  that  nobody  knows  her  !  *  * 
then  aloud — "Doesn't  a  man  always  expect  a  sacrifice 
from  a  woman  when  he  does  anything  for  her?  That's 
the  law  of  nature.  Your  husband  supports  you  and  spends 
his  life  for  you,  but  he  expects  you  to  give  him  children 
at  the  risk  of  yours,  and  keep  house  for  him  and  all  that. 
The  bargain  between  man  and  woman  is  unequal,  fix  it 
how  you  may.  But  that  is  the  glory  of  the  woman — that 
she  forgets  herself  for  the  man." 

He  paused  and  continued  very  low:  *'You  cannot 
forget  yourself  for  me?  " 

"  No.  I  don't  belong  to  you  and  I  do  belong  to  Mr. 
Howe,"  said  Fanny,  sturdily. 

'^  ^Belong'  to  a  man? — Bah!"  sneered  Beveridge. 
"What  married  woman's  cant  that  is!  How  can  one 
human  being  '  belong '  to  another  ?  Every  man  belongs 
to  himself  and  every  woman  to  herself — absolutely.  It's 
the  priests  that  have  put  these  slave's  phrases  into  peo- 
ple's mouths.  But  nobody  lives  up  to  them.  If  I'm  ever 
married  I  shall  tell  my  wife  beforehand  that  I'm  to  be  just 
as  free  after  marriage  as  I  was  before  it,  and  she  needn't 
expect  anything  else." 

"And  is  your  wife  to  be  free,  too?  "  asked  Fanny. 

"  Of  course  !  I  should  despise  myself  for  a  Turk  if  I 
ever  wanted  her  to  esteem  herself  mine  one  moment  after 
she  had  ceased  to  love  me  supremely,"  returned  Beveridge 
— ^lying  like  Satan,  for  he  knew  that  above  all  men  he 
should  be  a  jealous  and  exacting  husband. 

Fanny  looked  bewildered — as  indeed  she  genuinely  was, 
and  began  drawing  on  her  gloves  in  silence. 

"Do  you  know  what  attracted  me  to  you?"  pursued 


2  24  iV^W^  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  tempter,  as  the  tempted  one  still  said  nothing:  ''It 
was  just  this  very  trait — that  I  -thought  you  a  free  and 
fearless  spirit  who  could  look  at  things  as  they  are,  with- 
out being  terrified  by  the  hobgoblins  of  superstition  and 
propriety  that  keep  most  of  your  sex  cooped  up  and  bored 
to  death. — Well,"  with  a  sigh — "I  trust  I  may  some  day 
meet  a  woman  as  gay  and  sweet,  as  good  and  pure,  as  I 
know  you  are,  and  as  brave  and  daring  as  I  hoped  you 
were,  Mrs.  Howe;  for  that,  in  my  view,  would  be  a 
perfect  woman.  Meantime,  I  shall  keep*  an  envelope 
enclosing  a  thousand  dollar  bill  on  my  mantel-piece 
directed  to  yourself,  hoping  that  you  will  come  some  day 
and  take  it  and  prove  yourself  that  woman  As  I  told  you 
yesterday,  I'm  going  to  Baltimore  and  Washington  to- 
morrow to  be  gone  a  fortnight.  You  can  take  the  eleva- 
tor to  the  second  floor  in  the  Fairfax  Hotel,  turn  to  the 
right,  then  to  the  left,  and  at  the  end  of  the  corridor  is  a 
recessed  door  hung  with  a  curtain.  Behind  the  curtain  is 
a  bell-handle,  and  if  you  pull  it  my  man  Johnson  will 
admit  you.  Tell  him  you  are  my  cousin,  Mrs.  Ned  Mac 
Tavish,  from  Baltimore,  and  to  give  you  the  theatre 
tickets  I  left  for  you,  and  also  some  pate  and  olives,  and 
any  wine  you  like  that's  there — and  make  yourself  at  home 
generally.  I'm  sure  you'll  like  my  den,"  added  he, 
gaily;  ''greatest  luck  to  get  it !  Those  three  old  bache- 
lors knew  what  they  were  about  when  they  bought  that 
wide,  old-fashioned  three-story  house,  and  arranged  those 
floors  each  openin'  into  the  Fairfax !  Deuced  cosy  and 
convenient ! — and  one  of  'em  was  so  obligin'  as  to  die  just 
when  I  was  huntin'  for  an  apartment; — but,"  changing 
his  tone,  "it's  never  been  perfect  because  youve  never 
been  in  it !  "     Then,  pausing  and  looking  dreamily  at  her, 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  225 

he  murmured  as  it  to  himself  and  half  unconsciously — 
*' Ah,  to  be  really  trusted,  really  made  use  of  by  a  true 
woman- friend  !  I,  who  am  so  alone  in  the  world — who 
have  no  mother,  no  sister  !  ' ' 

On  principle  Beveridge  rarely  paid  compliments  and 
never  talked  sentiment.  He  preferred  to  keep  a  woman 
doubting  whether  he  really  admired  her,  and  hitherto 
Fanny's  vanity  had  had  little  satisfaction  out  of  him 
beyond  the  in  itself  very  flattering  fact  tha*:  he  was  much 
with  her.  But  now,  the  time  having  fully  come,  Bev- 
eridge played  out  his  trumps,  and  this  bold  and  sudden 
revelation  of  depths  of  feeling  and  tenderness  for  her 
which  she  had  not  suspected,  startled  and  affected  Fanny 
entirely  to  his  satisfaction.  She  gazed  wonderingly, 
inquiringly,  steadfastly  at  him,  and  drew  involuntarily  a 
deep  sigh.  Then  she  turned  her  eyes  away,  for  a  few 
moments  looked  vacantly  about  the  restaurant,  rose  to  go, 
and  as  they  walked  together  to  meet  the  ferry-stage,  their 
talk  was  of  indifferent  things. 

She  spent  a  week  of  distracted  irresolution  between  her 
nee4  of  money  and  her  fear  of  taking  a  step  of  which  she 
could  not  foresee  the  consequences ;  but  at  the  end  of  the 
eighth  day,  the  note  directed  to  ''  Mrs.  Ned  MacTavish  " 
11. 1  I  Uisappeared  from  Beveridge's  mantel-shelf,  and  the 
wife  of  David  Howe,  with  dazzled,  almost  intoxicated 
senses,  had  realized  what  the  luxury  of  a  millionaire  can 
be. 

As  the  latter  walked  into  his  apartment  on  his  return, 
his  first  glance  was  toward  the  place  whereon  he  had  left 
the  momentous  envelope.  He  had  fully  expected  to  find 
it  gone,  and  yet  he  was  startled  that  his  expectation  was 


2  26  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

realized.  Wholly  without  scruple  as  he  was,  he  had  never 
of  his  own  motion  deliberately  broken  into  that  holy  of 
holies — the  personality  of  a  fellow-creature.  No  unfallen 
girl,  no  yet-loyal  wife,  above  all,  no  mother! — had  hitherto 
been  on  his  conscience,  and  he  looked  anxiously,  with 
loud-beating  heart,  all  over  the  rooms  to  make  sure  that 
the  letter  had  not  been  displaced  by  the  servant.  He 
even  forced  himself  to  ask  the  latter,  as  if  casually, 
whether  his  cousin  Mrs.  MacTavish  had  called  for  the 
tickets;  and  when  he  was  told  that  she  had,  he  said 
grimly  to  himself :  '  *  She  has  been  here  once.  She  will 
come  again.  We  are  in  for  it  now,  sure  enough  !  " — and 
until  he  saw  her  again,  there  was  upon  his  soul  a  night- 
mare weight  like  lead.  He  was  half  inclined  to  fly — to 
go  abroad  at  once  before  any  hopeless  harm  should  come. 
But  his  passion  for  conquest,  for  ''pleasure,"  his  curiosity 
to  prove  what  Fanny  would  do — all  were  too  strong,  and 
he  remained,  not  knowing  whether  most  to  hope  or  fear 
that  he  should  eventually  consummate  earth's  greatest 
crime.  ''If  I  do  go,"  he  had  at  last  decided,  "I  had 
better  see  her  just  once  more  !  " 

But  when  they  met,  her  little  face  was  so  full  of  joy  and 
of  a  new  yet  subdued  tenderness,  that  he  had  never  found 
her  so  charming.  Instead  of  bidding  her  good-bye,  he 
did  his  best  to  persuade  her  to  come  to  his  rooms  again 
for  "just  one  mornin' — take  just  one  little  lunch  with  me 
— please  do  !  "  and  having  accepted  so  great  a  favor  from 
him,  how  could  she  resist?  In  truth,  even  without  that 
consideration,  the  secluded  luxury  of  those  wide,  quiet, 
rather  low  and  richly-dim  apartments,  where  she  might 
talk  all  unobserved  wfth  her  friend  for  hours,  and  where 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  227 

every  object  conspired  at  once  to  lull  and  to  delight — 
would  of  themselves  have  probably  proved  too  much,  as 
Beveridge  had  always  hoped,  could  he  get  her  once  to  see 
them,  for  Fanny's  prudence.  She  easily  persuaded  her- 
self that  in  gratitude  for  his  generosity  she  ought  indeed  to 
spend  with  him  the  *'one  mornin'  "  that  he  pleaded,  and 
the  appointment  was  accordingly  made.  The  lunch  he 
gave  her  in  his  delicious  little  dining  room  was  so  exquis- 
ite, the  wines  so  delicate  and  so  rare  (Fanny  was  a  natural 
wine-taster;  she  inherited  the  tendency  from  her  father), 
the  portfolios  and  cabinets  to  look  through  afterward 
were  so  superb,  that  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  deny 
herself  the  pleasure  of  coming  ''just  once  more."  Again 
and  again — once — twice — thrice — like  the  moth  fluttering 
round  the  candle,  did  she  find  herself  within  those 
enchanted,  those  irresistible  walls — did  she  leave  them 
with  the  wings  of  her  conscience  more  scorched  and  help- 
less, with  her  heart  more  on  fire  with  now  recognized  and 
acknowledged  passion,  until  struck  the  inevitable  hour 
when  right  and  wrong  seemed  mingled  and  dissolved  in 
one,  and  from  having  intended  originally  only  "to  have 
a  good  time,"  and  get  out  of  life  all  the  enjoyment  she 
could,  the  gay  Fanny  Howe  walked  beneath  the  sun,  that 
appallingly  ruined  thing — a  faithless  wife  ! 

That  great  leader  of  his  fellow-men — the  immortal 
Jefferson,  writing  from  Paris  to  a  friend  in  1787,  said 
that  "our  young  Republic  should  besiege  the  throne  of 
heaven  with  eternal  prayers  to  extirpate  from  creation  this 
class  of  human  lions,  tigers,  mammoths  called  'kings,' 
from  whom  let  him  perish  who  does  not  say — '  Good  Lord, 
deliver  us!'  " — and  in  contemplating  existing  society,  one 


228  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

wonders  when  a  great  woman-leader  will  arise  among 
women  who  in  like  manner  will  urge  them  '^  to  beseige  the 
throne  of  heaven  with  eternal  prayers  to  extirpate  from 
creation  this  class  of  human  lions,  tigers,  mammoths  called 
'men  of  the  world,'  from  whom  she  almost  deserves  to 
perish  who  does  not  say — '  Good  Lord,  deliver  us  !'  " 


CHAPTER   XXVI. 

DESERTED  ! 

Being  the  character  she  was,  it  was  a  matter  of  course 
that  Fanny  Howe  did  not  feel  her  awful  fall.  Far  from 
it.  Like  all  true  criminals,  she  justified  herself,  and  her 
justification  of  conduct  born  of  the  love  of  dress,  of 
pleasure,  and  of  flirting,  was  that  she  did  not  love  David 
Howe,  and  that  she  did  love  Ward  Beveridge.  She 
refused  to  think,  to  trouble  herself  about  the  future,  to 
ask  how  this  was  going  to  end.  She  merely  gave  herself 
up  to  floating  on  what  was  to  her  the  top  of  the  wave — the 
devotion  of  a  man  who  possessed  everything  that  she  was 
capable  of  appreciating  in  his  sex.  Beveridge  was  gener- 
ous, and  gave  her  money  by  handsful ;  but  she  was  too 
prudent  to  excite  suspicion  by  unusual  expenditure. 
''Vanity  Fair"  was  her  favorite  novel,  and  she  had  not 
read  it  for  nothing.  She  wondered  if  there  were  no  sav- 
ings banks  in  London  in  Becky  Sharp's  day,  that  the 
clever  little  woman  was  such  a  fool  as  to  keep  the  Lord 
Steyne's  surplus  in  the  writing-table  where  a  jealous  lord 
and  master  might  possibly  rummage  for  it ! 

She  was  in  truth  so  happy  and  satisfied  that  she  hoped 
the  state  of  things  between  herself  and  Beveridge  would 
never  change,  and  she  exerted  herself  to  the  utmost  to 
make  what  in  the  depths  of  her  heart  she  was  not  quite 
certain   of — a   genuine   conquest.     Cold,    imperious    and 


230  N£PV  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

exacting  to  her  own  husband,  to  men  in  general  she  was 
all  graciousness,  while  to  Beveridge — such  was  her  coaxing 
sweetness,  that  if  she  had  been  beautiful  instead  of  pretty- 
merely  and  very  dependent  on  dress  for  her  effect,  he 
might  have  ended  by  really  loving  her. 

Even  as  it  was,  the  silken  chains  were  wound  so  round 
and  round  him  that  he  found  some  difficulty  in  resolving 
to  break  them,  though  to  break  them  eventually  he  had 
intended  from  the  first. 

Many,  and  indeed  most  men,  until  they  make  up  their 
minds  to  accept  the  yoke  of  matrimony,  have  a  chronic 
fear  lest  some  woman  may  feel  she  has  a  "claim,"  and  on 
this  dare  to  base  a  *' demand"  upon  them;  and  in  Bev- 
eridge this  fear  was  almost  a  mania.  Wilful  by  nature, 
and  having  had  his  own  way  all  his  life  long,  he  was 
fully  resolved  to  have  it  to  the  end ;  to  be  as  free  as  air — 
to  dwell  in  the  world  doing  simply  as  he  chose  and  with 
no  one  to  call  him  to  account.  If,  woman-like,  Fanny 
never  allowed  herself  to  reflect  on  what  the  end  would  be, 
he,  man-like,  did  reflect  a  good  deal.  Nothing  would 
have  outraged  him  more  than  for  her  to  abandon  husband 
and  children  and  throw  herself  on  his  protection.  He  did 
not  think  it  probable  she  would.  Still,  it  was  possible. 
He  feared  a  certain  dare-devil  streak  he  was  sure  was  in 
her.  He  had  never  meant  the  afl'air  to  be  more  than  a 
part  of  his  ''experience"  according  to  the  Gospel  ot 
Goethe,  and  as  soon  as  he  saw  or  fancied  that  Fanny  was 
feeling  pretty  sure  of  him,  he  began  to  want  to  put  the 
ocean  between  them. 

An  almost  revulsion  came  over  him.  Rather  than 
bright  and  amusing,  this  woman  now  seemed  mentally 
vulgar  and  threadbare  to  him.     He  became  keenly  con- 


NEW  YORK;   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  23 1 

scious  of  her  want  of  real  beauty,  of  real  refinement,  of 
real  tenderness,  and  he  positively  hated  the  radiance  of 
satisfaction  with  which  she  greeted  his  lavish  checks. 
"  She's  common — common  as  she  can  be — and  that's  the 
fact!"  mused  he  to  himself  as  he  was  staring  out  of  the 
window  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  one  day  after  she 
had  left  him; — "I  must  get  out  of  this.  I  declare  it 
would  even  be  refreshin'  to  see  the  droopy  countess  again! 
She  was  at  least  a  lady  and  had  some  genuine  feelin' — 
poor  thing!  I'd  like  to  hear  her  play  Chopin  once 
more; — rather  pretty  idea  of  hers  to  re-name  her  pieces 
after  'Henri,'  as  she  used  to  call  me,  if  it  zvas  silly! — 
'  Happy  in  Henri ' — *  Apart  from  Henri ' — 'Longin'  for 
Henri ' — '  Prayer  for  Henri ' — and  when  she  played  them 
in  a  room  full  of  company,  to  look  over  to  me  with  those 
soft  eyes  at  the  end.  Gad, — this  Brooklyn  (he  often  gibed 
at  Fanny  in  his  thought  as  "  Brooklyn")  is  a  mud-pie  to 
Mme.  des  Roys — if  she  was  too  jealous  and  sentimental! 
Bah!  It's  always  somethin'  v/ith  a  woman!  Never  jusl- 
right !  "Why  in  hell  were  they  ever  made?  Curse  'em  all, 
I  say  !  Bored  with  'em  and  bored  without  'em — either 
way  they  make  life  a  torment  and  a  plague  !" — the  English 
of  all  which  discontent  with  and  criticism  of  the  little 
pleasure-lover  whom  he  had  once  found  so  "jolly"  was 
simply  that  he  was  tired  of  her,  and  a  little  afraid  of  her, 
and  consequently  that  it  would  be  the  part  of  prudence  as 
well  as  of  pleasure,  before  there  had  been  the  least  quarrel 
or  even  misunderstanding,  and  while  yet  the  affair  was 
undiscovered  and  unsuspected,  to  disappear.  He  had  first 
met  her  in  October,  and  before  the  May  leaves  were  out  he 
had  written  her  a  brief  note,  dated  as  well  as  mailed  from 
an  ocean  steamer,  in  which  he  enclosed  a  large  draft  and 


232  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

said  that  an  uncle  who  was  abroad  had  suddenly  cabled  for 
him — that  it  was  a  grief  to  him  to  sail  without  seeing  her, 
but  she  must  soon  write  care  Munro  &  Co.,  Paris — that 
probably  he  would  not  be  gone  long,  and  meantime  he 
should  think  of  her  as  the  dearest  and  sweetest  friend  he 
ever  had,  and  in  like  manner  he  hoped  she  would  never 
forget  her  ' '  grateful  and  devoted — H.   W.  By 

Lightly  begun,  the  affair  therefore  was  as  lightly 
dropped  on  the  part  of  Beveridge.  But  the  pair  left  each 
other  not  as  they  had  met.  They  were  no  exception  to 
the  rule  of  progressive  depravity.  Beveridge  had  large 
ability.  A  certain  foundation  of  grandeur  and  nobleness 
was  his.  It  is  conceivable  that  some  woman  walking  with 
him  as  the  best  women  best  love  to  walk  with  men — on  the 
plane  of  the  Mind,  of  the  Soul — might  have  engaged  and 
uplifted  his  energies  to  good. 

But  two  older  matrons — oni  because  she  wholly  loved 
him,  the  other  because  she  wholly  loved  herself — descended 
to  that  physical  level  whereon  Beveridge,  like  so  many 
men,  preferred  his  relations  with  the  other  sex,  and  his 
training  in  evil  was  completed.  His  first  crime  against 
marriage  reduced  his  feminine  ideals  to  a  question-point. 
His  second  gave  a  negative  to  the  question  even  for  those 
of  his  own  country.  From  Fanny's  influence  he  came  out 
still  more  material,  cynical,  brutal — still  better  fitted  to 
wage  merciless  war  on  helpless  animals  and  almost  equally 
helpless  women  and  thus  deeper  to  betray  the  interests 
confided  to  him  as  a  free  and  potent  American — than 
before.  For  him  humanity  had  now  no  sacredness,  and 
God  was  blotted  out. 

As  for  Fanny,  she  had  blackened  to  a  moral  Ethiop. 
When  Beveridge   first  met  her  she  was  simply  a  hard, 


JV£P^^  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  233 

worldly,  determined  pleasure-seeker  like  her  mother. 
When  he  deserted  her,  all  her  father  had  become  devel- 
oped in  her  as  well.  She  was  now  a  thorough  voluptuary 
— a  woman  honey-combed  with  evil. 

I  remember  that  in  the  Stowe-Byron  controversy  a 
spinster  defender  of  the  profligate  poet  indignantly  ex- 
claimed in  a  newspaper  protest: — ''If  Byron  was  dissi- 
pated, I  had  always  supposed  it  was  refined  dissipation  !  " 

Paradoxical  term  and  impossible  idea !  There  can  be 
no  such  thing  as  ''refined"  dissipation.  All  dissipation 
is  desecration,  and  all  desecration  is  gross,  defiling  and 
degrading — and  no  less  surely,  if  less  overwhelmingly,  to 
men  than  to  women. 

"  Ah  I  malheur  a  celui  qui  laisse  la  debauche 
Planter  le  premier  clou  sous  sa  mamelle  gauche. 
Le  coeur  d'uri  homme  vierge  est  un  vase  profond — 
Lorsque  la  premiere  eau  qu'on  y  verse  est  impure 
La  mer  y  passerait  sans  laver  la  souillure 
Car  I'abime  est  immense  et  la  tache  est  au  fond  I  "* 

"Woe"  indeed  to  such  a  one, — but  woe,  woe  also  to 
her  who  from  whatever  motive,  thus  begins  the  deprava- 
tion of  younger  manhood  !  How  awful — how  hopeless  to 
the  moralist  is  it  that  "  The  corruption  of  youth  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  a  single  sex ;  temptation  comes  as  often 
by  the  temptress  as  by  the  tempter;  the  generations  in 
fact  alternating  as  the  Messalina  and  the  Don  Juan  of  the 
one  following  them  !  " 


*  "  Ah,  woe  to  him  within  whose  virgin  heart  Profligacy  plants  even 
a  single  shaft!  Such  a  heart  is  a  cavernous  vase — and  if  the  first  drop 
spilled  therein  be  impure,  the  ocean  itself  may  pour  through  without 
cleansing  it;  for  the  abyss  is  immense  and  the  stain  at  its  deepest  depths." 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

LOST — THE     LAST    CHANCE  ! 

From  her  confidence  and  content  in  Beveridge  Fanny 
Howe  was  greatly  startled  by  his  abrupt  departure;  but 
grieved  and  berett  as  she  suddenly  found  herself,  not  for 
some  time  dVd  it  even  occur  to  her  that  she  was  deserted. 
She  had  received  from  him  so  much — she  had  given  him 
so  much  more !  She  could  not  dream  that  the  bright 
noon-day  sun  of  all  her  happiness  had  in  one  moment 
rushed  down  behind  the  horizon  and  left  her  in  utter 
blackness,  and  she  sent  one  letter  after  another  and 
reckoned  the  dates  for  the  returning  mails  as  a  matter 
of  course. 

And  in  our  modern  time  how  many  longing  hearts 
have  to  force  themselves  into  patience  and  quietude  over 
the  long  delays  of  these  same  ''returning  mails" — over 
that  vast,  that  awful  break  and  silence  in  love  and  tender- 
ness— an  intervening  ocean  !  So  many  miles  of  relentless 
water  to  be  ploughed  through,  rod  by  rod  !  So  many  more 
to  be  ploughed  back  again  before  the  throbbing  pulses  can 
clasp  the  longed-for  letter,  can  greet  the  adored  char- 
acters, cover  them  with  kisses,  perhaps  sink  to  the  knees 
in  worship  and  passionate  gladness  at  being  vouchsafed 
them  ! 

No  such  lover  as  this  was  Fanny,  but  even  so,  she  suf- 
fered enough.     At  the  very  earliest  she  knew  she  could  not 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  235 

hear  before  four  or  five  weeks,  and  unless  Beveridge  wrote 
from  Liverpool  it  might  be  six.  '^ After  getting  to  Lon- 
don," she  reflected,  '*he  would  be  rushing  about  and 
seeing  people — going  to  his  tailor  and  attending  to  a 
thousand  things.  In  fact  (it  would  not  be  very  kind,  but), 
he  might  not  even  write  even  from  London  or  Paris  as  he 
went  through  them.  He  might  possibly  wait  until  he  got 
fairly  to  Vienna  and  had  seen  his  uncle.  Men  were  so 
queer  about  writing — at  least,  some  men  were ;  and  Bev- 
eridge, especially,  was  not  one  of  the  writing  kind,  etc., 
etc." 

Thus  for  some  little  time  did  Fanny,  in  her  reasonable 
way,  forefend  alarm  and  even  anxiety. 

And  circumstances  also  helped  her.  The  fancy  had 
seized  Mr.  Howe  to  rent  for  the  summer  a  cottage  on 
Staten  Island,  instead  of  sending  the  family,  as  usual,  to 
Belmont ;  and  so  it  happened  that  while  Beveridge  was  on 
the  water,  Fanny  was  establishing  her  household  in  a 
pretty  little  villa  with  woodbine-shaded  porches,  and  with 
grass  and  trees  and  a  garden  such  as  for  the  first  days  sent 
the  children  wild.  The  looking-up  of  this  home  had 
pre-occupied  Fanny  for  a  week.  The  moving  in  and 
getting  settled  had  taken  a  succeeding  fortnight.  Then 
came  a  visit  from  Mrs.  Dexter  and  Josephine,  who  had 
lingered  on  to  enjoy  the  new  menage  through  the  de- 
licious Staten  Island  May  and  June, — the  orphan,  Clara 
Calvert,  being  claimed  by  the  other  grandmother  for  the 
summer.  Mr.  Howe  was  the  soul  of  ho.spitality,  and  was 
so  ravished  at  being  once  more  in  his  own  house  that  he 
brought  home  some  business  friend  to  dine  and  spend  the 
night  once  a  week  at  least.  Mrs  Belnap  was  a  constant 
visitor,  and  so,  in  spite  of  the  terrible  loss  of  the  one 


236  NEW  YORK.    A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

presence  which  was  more  to  he^  than  all  these  put  together, 
Fanny's  life  went  bowling  along  with  its  usual  animated 
distractions. 

But  now  not  only  the  five,  the  six — but  the  seven  and 
the  eight  weeks  for  which  she  had  prepared  and  schooled 
herself,  had  slowly  come  and  more  slowly  passed. 
Steamer  after  steamer  which  had  taken  out  each  a  letter 
from  her  to  her  late  lover,  had  returned,  and  still  no 
response — until  finally  began  to  dawn  upon  her  dismayed 
and  astonished  faculties  the  ghastly  fear  that  Beveridge 
had  given  her  up !  Dreadful  reflection  !  Had  he  not 
cared  for  her  after  all  ?  And  if  he  had  not,  why,  O  why 
had  he  invaded  her  happy,  careless,  innocent  life?  Why 
had  he  led  her  on  ?  Why  had  he  left  her  ?  What  had 
she  done?  They  had  had  no  quarrel.  Not  the  shadow  of 
a  shade  had  come  between  their  good — rather,  as  she  had 
supposed  it,  their  thorough  understanding.  Their  very 
last  good-bye  had  been  a  laughing  one,  as  gay  as  it  was 
affectionate.  She  had  enjoyed  him  so  entirely.  She  had 
valued  him  so  supremely.  He  had  seemed,  at  least,  to 
feel  the  same  toward  her.  In  fact,  he  had  sought  her,  and 
not  she  him.  Was  there  then  nothing  in  it?  Had  it  all, 
all  vanished  ?  Heavens !  Had  he  but  amused  himself 
with  her?  Oh,  cruel,  cruel,  monstrous  man  !  Ah  no  ! — 
Perhaps  he  was  but  ill  ? 

Thus  the  tortured  groping  of  her  thoughts  ! 

And  yet,  intense  as  became  Fanny's  misery  of  ignorance 
and  suspense,  Beveridge' s  stopping  short  in  the  affair 
before  any  breath  had  sullied  her  reputation,  was  of 
course,  and  as  he  hmiself  well  knew,  the  greatest  kindness 
he  could  have  devised.  It  was  Beveridge' s  chivalry  never 
to  seem  to  compromise  a  woman  when  he  was  really  doing 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  237 

SO.  From  the  hour  when  he  became  this  married  woman's 
betrayer,  nothing  could  exceed  the  care  he  took  to  conceal 
their  meetings.  He  ceased  calling  on  her  and  advised  her 
to  complain  laughingly  to  her  family  and  to  Mrs.  Belnap 
that  he  had  ''turned  out  a  snob  and  had  dropped  her 
acquaintance."  He  was  never  seen  on  the  street  or  at 
any  public  place  with  her.  Their  meetings  were  at  differ- 
ent and  distant  points.  To  Beveridge  it  was  part  of  the 
bouquet  of  this  forbidden  pleasure  that  for  hours  at  a  time 
a  wife  and  mother  disappeared  as  completely  from  all 
human  ken  as  though  she  were  blotted  out.  In  fact,  so 
thoroughly  did  he  guard  her  that  he  did  not  feel  as  if  he 
harmed  her  at  all  I — and  by  the  way,  no  man  ever  does 
think  that  he  lessens  or  lowers  a  woman.  It  is  only  when 
some  other  man  does  it ! 

Beveridge' s  abandonment  was  therefore  to  Fanny  one 
of  those  undeserved  rescues  which  the  religious  mind 
believes  are  often  the  direct  interpositions  of  Heaven  to 
save  us  from  ourselves ;  and  had  she  truly  loved  him — had 
she  had  even  that  plausible  excuse  for  breaking  the  most 
deep  and  binding  of  human  obligations,  she  would  now 
have  returned  to  her  duties  with  a  broken  and  a  contrite 
heart,  grateful  and  amazed  at  having  escaped  the  natural 
consequences  of  her  transgression,  and  seared  forever  into 
insensibility  to  the  approach  of  any  other  lover. 

And  the  Providence  that  loved  and  brooded  over  this 
wayward  life  as  over  all  others,  to  win  it  toward  its  ideal, 
still  further  essayed  to  save  the  wife  and  mother  in  her 
place,  by  opening  suddenly  at  her  feet  the  dread  reality 
that  sooner  or  later  every  human  soul  must  face. 

One  sultry  morning  late  in  June,  one  of  the  children 
awoke  with  a  high  fever  and  a  sore  throat.     The  doctor 


238  NEIV  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

who  was  summoned  pronounced  it  malignant  scarlet  fever, 
and  in  a  fright  Mrs.  Belnap,  who  had  never  had  the 
disease,  left  the  house  imrnediately.  The  next  day 
another  child  came  down  with  it,  and  Fanny  wrote  an 
urgent  note  to  her  mother,  who  had  not  yet  left  New 
York,  never  doubting,  especially  in  view  of  Mrs.  Dexter' s 
enormous  obligations  to  Mr.  Howe,  that  she  would  send 
Josephine  on  alone  to  Belmont  and  would  herself  return 
and  help  nurse  the  little  ones. 

But  in  common  with  most  selfish  people,  Mrs.  Dexter 
had  a  deadly,  unreasoning  fear  of  contagious  disease. 
For  answer  she  returned  the  downright  falsehood  that 
Josephine  was  far  from  well,  and  that,  hearing  the  news, 
both  were  in  such  a  panic  lest  she  too  had  taken  the  fever 
during  their  recent  visit,  that  they  felt  they  must  get 
instantly  home  to  Belmont.  The  thankless  pair  accord- 
ingly did  leave  New  York  the  same  evening,  and,  as 
generally  is  the  case  in  scarlet  fever,  the  Howe  family  was 
deserted  by  everybody  to  fight  the  fierce  disease  alone  as 
best  they  might. 

The  first  thought  of  the  alarmed  parents  had  been  to 
send  away  the  well  children  with  Jeannette.  But  on 
reflection  Fanny  decided  that  she  could  never  go  through 
a  siege  of  nursing  without  her  devoted  sister-in-law  ("to 
bear  the  brunt  of  it"  she  might  truthfully  have  added), 
and  so  she  insisted  that  all  the  children  might  as  well  be 
exposed  to  the  fever  *'  and  done  with  it ! — Every  child  is, 
sooner  or  later,  you  know,  Davy  !  Probably  they  have 
already  taken  it,  and  if  they  leave  home  it  might  break 
out  among  strangers."  So  she  reasoned,  and  obediently 
Mr.  Howe  procured  a  trained  nurse,  and  together  they  all 
endured  the  long  days  and  nights  of  fatigue,  anxiety  and 


NEM'   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  239 

suspense,  and  with  an  unimagined  result.  All  of  the  chil- 
dren had  the  fever,  and  three  of  them  died — the  oldest 
boy  and  the  two  youngest  girls,  one  of  them  the  "  baby  " 
of  the  family  and  Mr.  Howe's  idol. 

To  close  these  young  and  loving  eyes  in  death  was  a 
tremendous  experience  that  would  have  converted  any 
mother  but  such  a  hardened  pagan  as  Fanny.  And  it 
would  have  left  its  mark  upon  even  her,  but  through  it  all 
burned  the  far  intenser  dread  that  she  should  not  hear 
again  from  Beveridge.  W/iy  didn't  he  write?  In  the 
deadly  chill  of  bereavement  how  did  she  long  for  the  warm 
caressifig  atmosphere  that  now  it  seemed  to  her  he  bore 
always  about  him  !    , 

But  the  selfish  Lothario  wrote  not,  and  after  four  long 
months  of  absence  had  passed  without  word  or  sign, 
Fanny's  common-sense  accepted  the  situation.  A  splendid 
aristocrat  had  stooped  to  her  for  a  little  while,  had  taken 
all  she  could  give,  and  then  flung  her  aside.  She  did  not 
admit  that  it  was  heartless  love  of  pleasure  which  had  led 
herself  on  to  betray  her  husband.  She  did  perceive  that 
heartless  love  of  pleasure  had  made  Beveridge  betray  her; 
and  as  she  slowly  but  surely  realized  the  one  unforgivable 
perfidy — realized  that  she,  Fanny  Howe,  a  human  being, 
a  fellow-creature,  had  by  another  poor  human  worm  been 
used,  simply  and  merely  used,  rage  took  the  place  of 
passion  and  contempt  of  tenderness.  As  in  the  flush 
summer-time  she  stood  in  the  garden  in  her  black  habili- 
ments, her  pale  and  diminished  little  flock  about  her,  she 
felt  as  in  winter  might  some  stripped  and  frozen  but 
rebellious  tree.  She  would  not,  she  could  not,  accept  it 
all — death  and  funerals  and  crape  and  the  desertion  of  the 
man  to  whom  she  fain  would  have  clung !     It  was  all  an 


240  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

evil  dream  and  she  must  ind  would  forget  it  as  soon  as 
possible.  In  future  would  she  care  for  nothing !  She 
was  reckless,  she  would  be  reckless,  perfectly  reckless, 
now ! 

By  the  time  the  remaining  Howe  children  were  fully 
recov^ered,  the  season  was  well-nigh  over.  After  all  that 
strain,  distress  and  woe,  the  bereaved  mother  dwelt  upon 
the  necessity  for  them  all  of  an  immediate  ''  change,"  and 
in  his  sympathy,  the  far  more  bereaved  father,  who,  as 
Fanny  well  knew,  could  not  leave  his  business,  consented 
to  the  premature  breaking-up  of  the  pretty  cottage,  went 
himself  resignedly  back  to  the  Brooklyn  hotel,  and  sent 
his  wife  and  little  ones  to  spend  the. autumn  recuperating 
in  Belmont. 

On  the  way  thither  some  complication  on  the  always 
badly-managed  Midland  railroad  detained  the  train  for  an 
hour  or  two  at  a  country  station,  and  the  superintendent 
of  the  road,  who  happened  to  be  on  board,  very  obligingly 
explored  the  little  town  for  some  suitable  refreshments  for 
the  Howe  party.  He  was  a  tall  and  so-called  "hand- 
some ' '  man  of  about  thirty-five,  easy  and  pleasant  of 
speech  like  Mrs.  Howe  herself,  and  ''gentlemanly"  in 
precisely  the  same  sense  that  she  was  ''ladylike." 

Fanny,  longing  feverishly  for  a  distraction — for  a  relief 
from  her  ever-eating  thoughts — so  lavished  thanks  and 
sweetness  on  the  courteous  official,  that  before  the  journey 
was  over  he  was  infatuated  with  the  fascinating  New 
Yorker  in  her  mourning  weeds;  discerning  which,  the 
latter,  in  exhilaration  and  even  joy,  launched  a  desperate 
flirtation  at  once. 

The  road-superintendent  was  a  married  man,  it  is  true; 
but  that  was  nothing  to  Fanny.     He  was  not  a  swell  like 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  241 

Beveridge,  of  course,  but  for  that  very  reason  there  was  a 
rapport  between  the  pair  such  as  can  exist  only  between 
persons  in  the  same  social  conditions.  Moreover,  Fanny 
had  never  felt  sure  of  Beveridge,  whereas  the  new  flame 
was  a  genuine,  unmistakable  conquest  who  would  do  and 
dare  anything  for  her. 

Throughout  her  Belmont  visit,  and  though  it  was  sure 
to  excite  remark,  the  road  superintendent  stopped  over 
at  Belmont  to  get  a  glimpse  of  his  divinity  whenever 
his  duties  permitted ;  and  equally  regardless  of  her  deep 
mourning  and  of  what  Belmont  people  might  think  or  say, 
Fanny  walked  and  drove  about  with  this  man  and  was 
even  suspected  of  taking  short  trips  up  and  down  the  rail- 
road with  him.  In  the  winter  he  ran  down  to  New  York 
as  often  as  he  could  manage  it,  and  the  next  summer  again 
was  devoted  at  Belmont.  For  two  or  three  years  this  went 
on,  and  then — it  was  some  one  else  !  The  pleasure-lover 
had  discovered  the  possibilities  that  lay  in  chance  ac- 
quaintance, and  the  great  city  was  henceforth  practically 
all  before  her  where  prudently  to  choose.  Her  husband's 
income  grew  no  larger,  but  her  own  rich  dress,  her  gay 
and  beaming  looks,  knew  no  eclipse. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

BELMONT. 

The  fifteen  years  following  Fanny  Dexter' s  marriage 
saw  the  culmination  of  the  Dexter  prestige  in  Belmont, 
and  rounded  also  its  decline.  Never  at  home  in  winter 
from  that  time  forward,  Mrs.  Dexter  for  long  kept  open 
house  for  her  daughters  in  summer,  and  their  costly  and 
fashionable  dress,  their  rides  and  drives  about  the  place 
and  neighborhood,  and  their  annual  August  sojourn  at  the 
near-by  Belmont  Springs — all  this,  season  after  season  and 
for  many  in  succession,  produced  an  effect  of  such  gayety, 
luxury  and  ease  of  existence  compared  with  the  monoto- 
nous round  and  unstylish  garb  of  daily  duty  in  Belmont, 
that  the  inevitable  end  was  the  waking  of  deep  searchings 
of  heart  in  many  a  once  contented  village  breast. 

The  situation  of  Belmont  is  unique.  It  lies  on  the  west- 
ern slope  of  the  last  of  many  ranges  of  hills  that  run  north 
and  south  between  the  Green  Mountains  and  Lake  Cham- 
plain,  and  these  beautiful  hills,  all  wooded  but  one,  though 
not  abrupt  are  very  high.  At  their  base  stretches  westward 
a  little  plateau  parallel  with  themselves,  which  is  bounded 
at  either  end  by  bold  single  eminences  advanced  in  front 
of  the  main  range,  and  called  respectively  North  Top  and 
South  Top.  They  are  a  mile  or  two  apart,  and  between 
them,  and  on  either  side  of  the  main  road  which  runs  past 
their  feet,  and  a  section  of  which  forms  its  principal  and 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  243 

maple-shaded  street,  Belmont  has  grown.  The  plateau 
spreads  to  a  mile  west  of  Belmont,  then,  a  steep  but  short 
descent  drops  the  wayfarer  down  to  the  level  approaches 
of  the  lake-shore  hamlet  which  takes  its  name  from  Bel- 
mont Bay. 

From  Belmont  proper,  as  it  has  built  itself  round  its 
central  "green,"  and  branches  right  and  left  from  its  main 
artery,  not  much  can  be  seen  except  the  great  blue  backs 
of  the  distant  Adirondacks  in  the  west, — for  the  width  of 
the  plateau  at  this  point  quite  hides  the  lake  from  view. 
But  North  Top  pushes  its  southward  foot  into  the  very 
village,  and  a  short  walk  up  its  steep  slope  astonishes  and 
rewards  the  stranger  by  a  wide  revelation  of  valley,  lake 
and  mountain  that  seizes  both  eye  and  heart  with  a  magic 
and  mystic  charm.  Should  he  leave  the  road,  climb  the 
fence  into  the  hill-pasture  and  mount  to  the  real  rocky 
heights  above,  a  vision  unrolls  itself  before  him  which  for 
soft  and  exquisite  and  paradisaical  beauty  is  probably  not 
surpassed  in  this  world. 

Blue  sky,  blue  lake,  blue  mountains — all  stretch  simul- 
taneously north  and  south  round  the  western  curve  of 
the  earth  in  an  enchanting  perspective  which  hangs  in 
the  summer  air  like  a  great  soft  shimmering  picture. 
Across  the  lake  southward,  the  tallest  and  sharpest  peaks 
of  the  Adirondacks  are  fore-shortened  into  a  poetic  group, 
while  directly  opposite  Belmont  rises  the  massive  Lion 
Mountain  with  so  interminably  long  and  gradual  a  de- 
scent into  the  Canadian  plain,  that  it  seems  as  if  the 
haughty  ''  Empire  State  "  were  reluctant  to  let  itself  down 
into  such  provincial  neighborship.  At  the  gazer's  feet 
little  Belmont  nestles  in  thick  maple  foliage,  though  in  the 
grassy  fields  about  her  stand  many  slender,  graceful  elms. 


244  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

At  her  farther  end  the  abrupj  and  rugged  South  Top  bars 
the  free  untrammelled  valley  but  a  little  way,  then  leaves 
it  open  north  and  south  to  the  searchings  and  influences 
and  tidings  of  all  the  winds  that  from  the  Atlantic  and  the 
Hudson  River  rush  up  the  long  Champlain  depression. 

Nor  is  this  all  of  Belmont's  dower  of  natural  beauty. 
For  should  the  visiting,  stranger  take  a  drive  to  the  crest  of 
the  Belmont  hills  themselves,  and  fastening  his  horse,  make 
his  way  to  the  highest  or  ''Bellevue"  outlook — walling 
the  entire  east  the  bold  outlines  and  purple  hues  of  the 
Green  Mountains  rise  before  him.  In  paler  and  paler 
tones  they  sweep  southward  until  they  seem  to  join  the  far 
circle  of  the  lower  Adirondacks,  while  northward,  both 
picturesque  chains  sink  to  earth  at  the  Canada  border  with 
only  the  Montreal  heights  like  a  lost  link  between.  And 
now  to  the  west  the  climax  of  the  glorious  panorama  bursts 
upon  him !  Lake  Champlain,  broadest  just  opposite  Bel- 
mont, and  with  all  her  islands  on  her  breast,  lies  enframed 
in  the  long  sapphire  Adirondack  range,  a  great  sapphire 
mirror  beneath  a  sapphire  sky,  while  beneath  him  North 
Top  and  South  Top  have  sunk  into  the  wide  and  varied 
plain  which  with  its  woods  and  fields  and  homes  and  Bel- 
mont itself,  fills  up  the  middle  distance.  It  is  the  famous 
view  from  Mansfield  Mountain  on  a  reduced  and  perhaps 
lovelier  scale — a  magnificent  azure  symphony  that  seems  to 
lean  graciously  toward  you  out  of  the  ether — a  coup  d'oeil 
of  mingled  sweetness  and  stateliness  almost  never  vouch- 
safed— and  why  has  the  Genius  of  America  never  yet  in- 
spired some  serene  master  of  American  sky  and  distance — 
some  Frederick  E.  '^^urch — to  paint  its  dreamlike  splendor 
and  repose — its  sup    ^  yet  celestial  blues  ? 

With  such  extended  prospects*  within  so  short  a  walk  or 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  245 

drive,  it  was  not  altogether  surprising  that  Belmont  resi- 
dents should  be  subject  to  a  restlessness  and  an  ambition 
that  towns  with  narrower  horizons  knew  not  of.  Perhaps 
it  was  that  wide-spreading  landscape  which  suggested  flight 
and  emancipation  from  all  limiting  surroundings — though 
to  make  this  probable,  I  ought  to  be  able  to  show  that  its 
residents  were  frequently  in  the  habit  of  walking  or  driv- 
ing to  their  numerous  ''coignes  of  (pictorial)  vantage" 
and  imbibing  all  the  wild  and  wayward  influences  that 
"the  bodiless  airs — a  wizard  rout"  might  bring  them; 
whereas,  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  the  majority  of  the 
Belmontese,  or  at  least,  the  majority  of  its  women  (for  all 
men  in  Northern  Yankee-land  manage  to  recreate  them- 
selves more  or  less  often  with  a  **  horse  and  buggy  "),  almost 
never  left  the  precincts  of  the  village  !  Walking — except 
that  incessant  phase  of  it  known  as  "housework,"  was 
unknown  either  as  a  necessity  for  health  or  as  a  possibility 
for  pleasure.  Few  had  explored  the  gentle  fascinations  of 
the  Belmont  shore;  fewer  still  were  familiar  with  the 
gentle  glories  of  the  Belmont  hills. 

Whether  or  not  "environment"  had  anything  to  do 
with  its  subsequent  career,  certain  it  is  that  within  twenty 
years  from  the  opening  of  the  railroad  in  Belmont,  in 
spirit  the  village  was  transformed.  For  some  time  the 
little  community  had  been  kept  to  its  ancient  moorings  by 
the  elements  which  had  dominated  it  from  its  founding. 

The  Ashursts,  intensely  sympathetic  and  outspoken  in 
the  anti-slavery  agitation,  but  foraging  far  and  wide  in  all 
fields  of  current  English  literature  and  keeping  their 
mental  granaries  full  to  overflowing,  continued  on  their 
tranquil  way  of  generous  but  simple  hospitality,  and 
laughed  good-naturedly  at  the  Dexter  airs  and  pretentions 


246  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  successes.  The  little  circle  surrounding  them  did 
the  same  thing,  and  especially  the  family  of  their  friend 
and  pastor,  Mr.  Gardner — by  living  still  more  simply  and 
adding  love  and  skill  in  music  and  art  to  a  kindred  intel- 
lectual culture,  helped  to  maintain  the  Puritan  prestige  of 
ideas  over  things,  and  therefore  to  prevent  Dexterism  from 
being  more  than  a  tolerated  exotic  in  the  wholesome  New 
England  soil. 

Mrs.  Gardner,  indeed,  could  have  kept,  not  a  village, 
but  a  city,  a  state,  a  nation,  in  the  right  path,  had  it  been 
committed  to  her  to  do.  She  was  an  apparition  to  be  met 
perhaps  once  in  a  century — a  regal  and  complicated  nature 
combining  power  to  lead  and  to  command  with  the  flam- 
ing zeal  of  a  missionary  and  the  gifts,  longings  and  ir- 
rationalities of  an  artist, — something  of  a  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, a  Santa  Teresa,  a  Marie  Bashkirtseff  all  in  one  ! 
The  technical  difficulties  of  neither  painting,  music  or  nee- 
dlework daunted  those  wonderful  hands  which  "touched 
nothing  they  did  not  adorn  !  "  In  music  she  even  had  the 
'' absolute  pitch  "  and  would  dash  off  a  charming  little 
fantasia  on  any  air  given  her ;  she  wrote  prose  or  verse 
with  equal  ease;  books  were  her  delight  and  gardening 
her  joy,  while  her  remarkable  medical  skill  was  at  the  ser- 
vice of  all  who  came  for  it.  In  religion  she  was  an  ex- 
alted enthusiast,  judging  every  deed,  even  the  smallest,  in 
the  infinite  balance  of  heaven  and  hell,  and  in  her  elo- 
quence and  fervor  rarely  failing  to  bring  to  God  any  heart 
with  whom  she  communed. 

She  was  a  beautiful  and  lofty  and  unsmiling  woman,  so 
intensely  in  earnest  and  pre-occupied  that  people  knew 
not  what  to  make  of  her,  and  were  struck  and  awed  rather 
than   attracted.     Had   she  lived  one  generation  later — 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  247 

lived  in  this  generation  of  ours  which  sees  so  many  women 
making  careers  for  themselves,  she  would  have  won  fame 
and  admiration  as  an  artist  or  a  musician — or  fortune  and 
prestige  as  a  great  physician — or  realms  for  Christ  as  a 
thrilling  evangelist. 

As  it  was,  born  of  the  most  conservative  foreign  parent- 
age, and  bred  in  the  narrow  confines  of  that  Episcopal 
church  which  to  its  own  spiritual  regress  backwards, 
holds  over  its  women  the  procustean  rigor  of  St.  Paul 
— she  never  drew  the  free  breath  of  her  own  free  coun- 
try. Always  a  semi-invalid  and  rarely  leaving  the 
house  except  to  go  to  church  (where  as  the  organist  she 
improvised  the  most  beautiful  voluntaries  and  accompani- 
ments), Mrs.  Gardner  spent  her  life  in  incessant  hand- 
sewing  for  her  many  little  ones,  and  as  she  sewed,  in 
training  them  and  a  few  young  pupils  in  the  rudiments  of 
the  high  aesthetic  things  she  loved. 

Let  us  suppose  that  the  mothers  of  Belmont  could  have 
seen  Mrs.  Gardner  as  doubtless  her  Maker  saw  her,  and 
could  have  said  to  her — '*  Let  us  do  the  family  sewing  for 
you  which  takes  up  all  your  time  and  is  so  cruel  to  your 
delicate  lungs  besides — and  do  you,  with  your  passion  for 
the  right  and  the  beautiful,  teach  our  children  the  Bible, 
and  impress  upon  them  your  own  deep  sense  of  'Thou 
God  seest  me,''  which  is  the  main  spring  of  all  noble 
national  as  of  all  true  personal  life.  Lay  out  the  village 
green  and  other  pleasances  for  us  as  you  could  so  artistic- 
ally do,  and  interest  our  boys  in  gardening  and  in  tree  and 
shrub-planting,  our  girls  in  house-plants  and  aesthetic  hand- 
iwork. In  the  winter  evenings,  train  from  them  a  village 
chorus  and  orchestra,  and  give  us  monthly  concerts  with 
your  brilliant  piano  and  organ  accompaniments.     In  the 


248  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

summer  days,  take  others  out  in  sketching  parties  and  in- 
spire them  to  love  and  see  nature  with  your  own  Ruskin 
and  Wordsworth-taught  eyes." 

Fancy  what  Belmont  might  have  become  with  her  rising 
generation  the  pupils  and  disciples  of  this  strangely  dow- 
ered and  inspired  woman  !  Certainly  it  would  have  been 
a  nursery  of  high  ideals  and  joyous  endeavor — a  happy 
missionary  centre  for  many  best  and  loveliest  things. 

But  the  house-mothers  of  that  day  had  no  other  thought 
than  the  house-mothers  of  this — to  keep  each  her  own 
family  as  best  she  could  and  leave  her  neighbors  to  do  the 
same,  each  totally  regardless  of  the  wealth  of  special  talent 
that  might  be  going  to  waste  among  those  neighbors,  and 
even  though  it  were  just  what  was  needed  to  make  good 
her  own  deficiencies ! 

And  so  the  gifted  aesthete  and  ministrant  and  religionist 
who  was  meant  for  the  wide  halls  of  Art  or  Beneficence, 
strove  to  content  herself  within  the  little  hidden  corner 
which  was  her  lot,  and  to  transmit  the  stern  creed  which 
the  Protestant  theology  of  her  day  was  still  echoing  from 
the  Catholic  and  Jewish  theologies  of  former  ones. 

It  was,  that  by  the  doom  of  Genesis,  men  must  rule, 
— women  must  obey. 

So  little  did  she  question  it,  that  as  Hawthorne's  Hes- 
ter elaborated  the  brand  of  the  ' '  scarlet  letter  ' '  upon  her 
breast,  so  did  Mrs.  Gardner  elaborate  what  she  deemed  the 
brand  of  Eden  upon  her  life. 

*'  Man,"  she  would  say,  "■  is  under  one  curse,  the  curse 
of  labor — '  In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  shalt  thou  eat  bread  ' 
but  woman  is  under  three.  First,  the  curse  of  labor  even 
more  than  man,  for  'woman's  work  is  never  done,'  and 
he,  moreover,  can    choose   any  labor,  but  she  can  only 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  249 

have  domestic  labor.  Second,  '  Thy  desire  shall  be  to 
thy  husband  and  he  shall  rule  over  thee/ — and  this  is 
woman's  curse  of  mind-yearning  for  the  other  sex,  for 
women  always  long  to  be  the  mental  companions  and 
friends  of  men,  while  men  chiefly  want  them  physically,  and 
mentally  they  rule  and  ignore  them.  Third,  '  In  sorrow 
shalt  thou  bring  forth  children,' — and  thisis  woman's  curse 
of  physical  suffering,  for  even  if  women  have  talents  equal 
to  men  their  health  will  never  permit  them  to  develop 
them." 

In  her  invaluable  portrait  of  '  ^  American  Society  ' '  pub- 
lished in  1837,  Harriet  Martineau  remarked  how  beneath 
the  American  theory  and  boastings  regarding  personal 
liberty  was  the  position,  not  only  of  the  negro  slaves,  but 
of  American  women  as  the  reasoning  and  reasonable  wives 
and  daughters  of  reasoning  and  reasonable  men ;  and  she 
also  recorded  that  at  that  date  American  women  had  but 
two  active  interests  in  life — housekeeping  and  religion — 
the  latter  of  which  they  were  accepting  simply  as  taught 
them,  and  apparently  with  neither  question  nor  thought/ 

Deep  in  Scripture  lore  though  Mrs.  Gardner  was,  it 
never  occurred  to  her  to  ask  why  the  despotic  ^' shall" 
and  ''shalt"  of  the  Genesis  doom  ought  not  to  be 
rather  translated  by  the  prophetic  ''will"  and  "wilt;" 
nor,  even  interpreting  it  at  its  worst,  did  she  wonder — 
when  Jesus  declared  that  the  "Spirit  of  the  Lord  was 
upon  Him  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliver- 
ance to  the  captives  and  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are 
bound," — whether  this  emancipation  was  not  as  much  in- 
tended for  the  daughters  of  her  who  ' '  was  first  in  the 
transgression '  *  as  for  the  sons  of  him  who  so  cheerfully 
seconded  it ! 


250  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

To  submit,  to  suffer  and  fo  work ;  to  be  a  function,  i.e. 
a  ''wife  and  mother;"  to  live  for  your  family  and  aim 
and  strive  for  nothing  for  yourself  except  strength  from 
above  to  bear  your  daily  load — this  was  the  universal 
theory  of  womanhood  of  Mrs.  Gardner's  youth,  and  to  it 
she  clung  to  the  end.  When  her  cultured  and  more  lib- 
eral husband  taught  their  daughters  Latin  and  mathe- 
matics, and  when  she  heard  of  the  Antioch  and  Oberlin 
''  co-education "  colleges,  she  was  alarmed  and  even 
resentful  lest  her  sex  should  be  rebelling  against  the 
"  divine "  decree  of  its  limitations.  Had  not  her  own 
stately  bishop-father  said  to  her  at  fourteen: — "My  dear, 
you  must  stop  school  now.  You  know  enough  for  a 
woman." 

So  credulously  has  the  glorious  human  mind  often  bent 
to  the  slanders  against  itself  and  its  Maker  which  its 
human  rulers  impose  upon  it ! 

But  the  human  heart  never  accepts  these  atrocities.  It 
never  has  and  it  never  will  believe  that  it  was  created  for 
anything  but  Freedom,  Beauty  and  Joy,  and  when  these 
are  denied  it  on  earth,  it  sometimes  sets  itself  to  break  in 
order  to  kill  the  body  and  let  the  immortal  spirit  go ! 

For  many  years — or  what  seemed  many  years  when 
measured  by  the  slow  pulsings  of  pain  and  of  desire — Mrs. 
Gardner  was  buoyed  by  a  formless  hope  that  somehow, 
some  day,  a  larger,  fuller  life  would  open  for  her  ! 

Infinitely  more  than  the  aspiring  Mrs.  Dexter,  did  she 
feel  that  Belmont  was  not  her  proper  sphere.  Once  for  a 
short  period  she  had  lived  in  Philadelphia,  and  she  had 
ever  after  that  sick,  pent  longing  for  a  city — for  a  great 
wide  place  where  she  could  hear  music  and  see  pictures, 
and  where  she  could  meet  artistic  and  sympathetic  people 
and  have  some  scope  for  that  stifled  ardor  for  the  beautiful 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  251 

which  seemed  but  to  consume  her  the  more,  the  less  it  had 
to  feed  upon. 

But  when  she  had  passed  thirty-five  and  the  piles  of 
sewing  kept  growing  with  the  growing  family ;  when  it  was 
forced  upon  her  that  her  shattered  health  alone  must  be  a 
perpetual  prison-sentence  upon  her — as  she  sewed,  the 
work  beneath  her  eyes  was  dimmed  by  ever-welling  tears. 

It  was  so  harrowing  to  think  that  she  would  never,  never 
be  able  ''to  show  what  she  could  do" — no,  not  even  to 
her  own  children  ! 

It  was  so  piercing  to  hear  about  the  distant  triumphs  of 
others  and  to  know  that  with  their  "  chance  "  she  would 
have  equalled  them  ! 

It  was  so  killing  perpetually  to 

"  Dream  what,  were  men  more  kind,  I  might  have  been, 
How  strong,  how  fair,  how  kindly,  how  serene, 
Glowing  of  heart  and  glorious  of  mien  !  " 

Weeping  she^  said  one  day  to  a  friend  : — "/  have  noth- 
ing to  look  forward  to  and  nothing  to  expect !  ' ' 

Imagine  Marie  Bashkirtseff  without  money,  without 
masters,  without  the  culture  of  travel  or  of  great  cities, 
buried  in  the  remote  estates  of  her  people,  and  burdened 
with  the  hand- sewing  of  a  large  family — what  would  her 
** genius"  have  done  for  that  brilliant  Russian  consump- 
tive more  than  did  hers  for  this  brilliant  American  one? 

And  so  over  the  richly  endowed  creature  passed  the 
Juggernaut  of  her  generation,  and  not  long  after  Fanny 
Dexter' s  marriage  she  died,  leaving  behind  her  a  baby  of 
one  year  and  other  little  ones  of  three,  of  seven,  of  nine, 
to  prove  for  the  billionth  time  that  women  are  not  created 
for  the  other  sex  and  its  posterity — otherwise  they  would 


252  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

be  kept  on  earth  to  take  care  of  their  husbands  and  grow- 
ing children — but  for  themselves  /  For  a  few  seasons  Mr. 
Gardner  and  his  eldest  daughter  continued  the  little 
home  school  she  had  begun,  and  then  the  Gardner  family, 
with  all  its  enthusiasm  for  music,  art  and  literature,  moved 
away,  and  nothing  but  a  lowly  graveyard  cross  remained 
in  Belmont  to  witness  that  a  high  queen  of  the  earth  had 
once  dwelt  unrecognized  and  uncrowned  upon  its  wind- 
swept slope ! 

The  Ashursts — alas  indeed  for  Belmont ! — soon  fol- 
lowed the  Gardners.  For  reasons  of  family  health,  Mr. 
Ashurst  sought  and  obtained  from  the  Republican  admin- 
istration, which  well  owed  it  to  him,  an  honorable  foreign 
appointment,  and  the  family  never  again  resided,  and 
indeed  rarely  visited,  in  Belmont.  Other  unfortunate 
changes  preceded  or  followed.  The  pastor  of  the  Congre- 
gational church,  a  strong  and  thoughtful  and  independent 
man,  was  elected  president  of  the  State  university,  and 
the  personality  of  his  successor  by  no  means  approached 
his  own.  Mr.  Ashurst' s  near  and  favorite  neighbor,  after 
marrying  from  his  charming  home  his  only  child,  suddenly 
died,  and  his  wife  went  to  live  in  New  York  with  her 
daughter.  The  village  schoolmistress,  too,  whose  dark 
eyes  and  interesting  talk  had  for  years  enlivened  the 
Ashurst  and  similar  tea-parties,  was  largely  lost  to  public 
and  social  usefulness  under  the  extinguisher  of  rural  mar- 
riage, which  in  Belmont,  as  in  all  the  villages  of  the 
State,  meant  practically  taking  a  place  to  do  general 
housework  in  return  for  a  modest  home  and  for  still  more 
modest  dress.  Another  winsome  and  cultured  woman,  a 
lawyer's  clever  wife,  became  so  ardent  a  Roman  Catholic 
as  necessarily  to  fall  out  of  rapport  with  her  old  acquaint- 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  253 

ance,  and  eventually  she  and  her  husband  removed  to  an 
out-of-town  farm. 

Thus  by  an  untoward  fate  the  higher  New  England 
elements,  the  chief  centres  of  its  original  *^  sweetness  and 
light,"  one  by  one  abandoned  beautiful  Belmont,  and  left 
it  to  the  New  York  materialism  and  snobbishness  which 
the  Dexters  of  the  Episcopal,  and  a  certain  rich  family  of 
Browns  of  the  Congregational  church,  from  the  opening 
of  the  railroad  epoch,  poured  in  upon  it. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

AUSTEN    BROWN. 

The  original  Austen  Brown  of  Belmont  was  a  typical 
rural  Yankee  who  had  accumulated  what  for  a  New  Eng- 
land village  was  a  fortune,  and  by  the  usual  Yankee 
methods, — i.e.^  ceaseless  industry  and  painful  thrift  on  the 
part  of  the  wife — shrewd  bargaining  and  ''financing"  on 
that  of  the  husband.  He  had  been  a  chief  promoter  of 
the  railroad,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  brought  New  York 
and  Boston  within  a  day's  journey  of  Belmont,  and  united 
them  also  with  Montreal.  In  its  survey  he  and  his  associ- 
ates had  had  the  pleasure  of  leaving  the  chief  city  of  the 
little  State  on  one  side,  and  thus  of  compelling  all  the 
travellers  who  were  obliged  to  go  through  it  to  New  York 
or  any  intermediate  point,  to  the  exquisite  inconvenience 
of  changing  cars  which  were  always  behind  time  at  a 
''Junction"  where  there  were  no  houses  to  speak  of,  but 
a  great  deal  of  land  owned  by  their  enterprising  selves. 

The  "Midland"  road — for  so  was  it  called — having 
been  initiated  on  the  principle  of  doing  unto  others  as 
you  would  not  they  should  do  to  you,  the  enemies  of  the 
Austen  Browns  were  wont  to  declare  that  the  principle 
was  never  after  lost  sight  of.  It  was  organized  and  sub- 
scribed for  in  a  poor  little  State  which  is  the  special  home 
of  rigid  personal  economy,  but  the  many  bridges  and  steep 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  255 

grades  incident  to  a  mountainous  country  made  the  build- 
ing of  it  more  costly  than  had  been  supposed,  and  after  it 
began  running,  its  rails  and  rolling-stock  wore  out  in  one- 
fifth  of  the  time  that  had  been  expected.  It  could  not 
renew  them ;  it  could  not  pay  the  interest  on  its  bonds ; 
finally,  it  could  not  pay  the  rent  of  the  connecting  Canada 
railroad  known  as  the''  Montreal,"  which  it  had  leased  in 
order  to  take  its  trains  into  the  city  of  the  same  name. 
The  directors  of  the  latter  road  naturally  brought  suit  to 
recover  their  arrears,  and  then  the  Midland  had  to  fail — 
and  alas, — it  had  cost  eight  millions  ! 

Consequent  upon  this  bankruptcy,  the  Chancery  Court 
of  Belmont  County  appointed  a  board  of  receivers  under 
whose  direction  both  roads  should  be  run,  until  their  joint 
earnings  should  have  paid  up  the  back  rent  due  to  the 
Montreal. 

The  president  of  this  board  of  receivers  was  Austen 
Brown  the  second,  now  the  inheritor  of  his  father's  money 
and  business  interests.  His  business  talent  and  training 
he  had  also  got  from  his  father,  and  like  him  again,  he 
was  a  deacon  in  highest  standing  in  the  Congregational 
church.  But  his  were  by  no  means  the  narrow  rural  mind 
or  the  unpolished  rural  manner.  He  was  a  college  and 
also  a  law-school  graduate,  and  his  rugged  features  and 
retreating  eyes  were  pleasantly  contradicted  by  a  genial 
address  and  a  persuasive  tongue  which  needed  but  to  ask 
of  his  fellow-beings  in  order  to  have. 

This  village  magnate  took  the  ground  with  his  associate 
receivers  that  the  Midland  property  in  their  charge  must 
first  of  all  be  brought  up  to  a  state  of  working  efficiency. 
"  If  I  am  the  guardian  of  a  minor,"  he  argued,  ''  and  he 
has  a  mortgaged  farm,  I  must  keep  the  barns  and  fences. 


256  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  tools  and  implements,  in  proper  number  and  repair,  of 
course,  or  I  can't  carry  on  the  farm ;  and  equally  of  course, 
the  pay  for  such  renewal  and  repair  takes  legal  precedence 
of  all  other  claims,  even  of  mortgage  interest.  Now  this 
board  is  under  bonds  to  pay  the  rent  of  the  Montreal  road, 
but  we  can't  do  it  if  our  own  road  is  so  run  down  that  it 
won't  earn  it  !  As  you  know,  it  is  thoroughly  run  down 
— is  in  want  of  everything.  We  must  then,  under  sanc- 
tion of  the  Court,  borrow  money  whose  payment  shall  take 
precedence  of  every  other  claim  against  us,  even  to  the 
claim  of  the  Montreal — though  with  the  Midland  in  good 
order  there  is  no  doubt  but  the  Montreal  rent  can  and 
will  be  paid." 

''  Able,  far-seeing  Austen  Brown  !  " — so  said,  so  thought 
his  fellow-trustees,  and  in  the  exercise  of  their  powers  in 
chancery,  they,  or  rather,  their  clever  president  for  them, 
first  placed  on  the  city  stock-markets  several  million 
dollars  worth  of  ' '  Equipment  Bonds, ' '  the  money  from 
the  sale  of  which  he  declared  was  to  go  for  the  purchase 
of  the  rolling-stock  so  much  needed  by  the  line.  Next  he 
negotiated  an  equally  generous  issue  of  '*  Construction 
Bonds,"  whose  price  was  to  be  spent  on  the  road-bed  and 
bridges  and  in  building  more  stations.  In  order  to  secure 
these  advances,  mortgages  were  given  on  the  already  mort- 
gaged Midland,  and  the  bond-takers  felt  safe,  because  they 
supposed  themselves  dealing  with  the  honorable  agent  of  a 
high  court  of  justice. 

With  its  new  resources  the  Midland  bounded  into  a  new 
prosperity,  and  after  a  reasonable  time  the  back  rent  of 
the  Montreal  was  indeed  fully  paid  up.  As  this  was  the 
purpose  for  which  President  Brown  and  his  fellows  had 
been  appointed  the  receivers  of  the  road,  legally  their 


NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  257 

trust  was  now  expired  and  they  should  have  settled  their 
accounts  and  asked  to  be  discharged. 

But  our  Belmont  financier  was  ready  for  anything  rather 
than  a  discharge  from  his  post  of  financial  power  as  man- 
aging trustee  of  a  great  quasi-public  property.  He  was 
deep  in  enterprises  for  the  ''  development "  of  the  Midland 
and  of  his  own  private  fortune  in  connection  with  it,  and 
his  associates  were  in  more  or  less  deeply  with  him.  If 
they  retired  they  were  all  ruined,  and  the  road,  moreover, 
would  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  city  capitalists  to  whom  it 
was  mortgaged.  Self-interest  and  State  pride  alike  trem- 
bled before  such  an  alternative. 

When  there  is  a  will  there  is  a  way.  The  chancellor  of 
the  Belmont  court  which  had  confided  to  them  their  trust, 
was  a  venal  creature  under  whose  purchaseable  ermine  a 
daring  policy  might  be  pursued,  and  on  his  side  President 
Brown  was  ingenious  and  cool.  He  left  it  to  his  brother 
receivers  whether,  instead  of  resigning  their  trust,  a  bet- 
ter plan  would  not  be  to  enter  into  a  contract  by  which, 
under  authority  of  a  chancery  decree,  they  should  call 
themselves  as  a  corporation  name  the  * '  Board  of  Receivers 
and  Managers  of  the  Midland  Through  Line,"  and  then 
— keep  on  just  as  they  were  ? 

The  other  receivers  discreetly  refrained  from  questioning 
too  closely  either  the  law  or  the  equity  of  this  alluring 
proposition.  It  sufficed  them  to  reflect  that  President 
Brown  was  a  trained  lawyer  who  of  course  must  know 
what  he  was  talking  about,  and  that  where  he  led  it  was 
safe  to  follow.  They  did  not  resign  the  receivership,  and 
they  did  enter  into  the  suggested  corporation  contract, 
and  their  friend  the  chancellor  signed  it  for  them  in  the 
form  of  a  decree — although  the  highest  legal  learning  in 


258  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  State  afterward  maintained  before  its  highest  tribunal 
that  the  chancellor's  Court  had  no  more  right  to 
''decree"  the  existence  of  such  a  contract  than  it  had 
''  to  decree  that  one  of  the  parties  should  marry  the  other 
one's  daughter !  " 

Thence  began  a  series  of  financial  juggleries  which  in 
skill  and  unscrupulousness  have  been  compared  to  the  cele- 
brated game  of  ''Erie," — and  with  a  like  result  of  trans- 
ferring into  the  deep  pocket  of  the  one  the  contents  of  the 
shallow  pockets  of  the  many  !  The  railroad  world  was 
deceived  by  the  scheme  just  as  the  astute  Midland  presi- 
dent intended  it  should  be.  The  managers  of  the  Mon- 
treal, in  particular,  well  pleased  at  having  received  their 
back  rent,  continued  to  lease  their  road  to  the  supposed 
legal  ' '  Board  of  Receivers,  etc. ' '  on  the  same  terms  as 
before, — i.e.,  for  a  rental  of  eight  per  cent,  of  its  value 
secured  by  a  mortgage  on  the  joint  earnings  of  both  roads. 
In  its  own  section  the  Montreal  was  a  favorite  investment 
with  farmers  and  persons  of  small  means.  It  was  fully 
paid  for  and  unincumbered,  and  when  leased  to  the 
Midland  was  in  excellent  working  order. 

For  ten  years  the  owners  of  this  standard  property  had 
every  reason  to  be  satisfied  with  the  bargain  of  their 
directors.  Their  rent  was  promptly  received  and  therefore 
their  expected  dividends  as  regularly  declared — when  sud- 
denly their  prosperity  collapsed  !  The  Midland  ceased 
paying  the  Montreal  any  rent,  and  when  for  the  second 
time  the  latter  brought  suit  for  arrears  against  it,  the 
tables  proved  to  be  most  extraordinarily  turned. 

Out  of  fifteen  millions  of  capital  known  to  have  gone, 
first  and  last,  into  the  Midland,  only  about  seven  in  actual 
values   could   be   found !      The   road   was   four  millions 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  259 

behind  in  its  accounts,  and  so  far  from  paying  up  the  back 
rent  of  the  Montreal,  President  Brown  and  his  bogus 
"Board  of  Receivers"  brought  a  counter-suit  against  the 
astonished  corporation  to  compel  its  being  handed  bodily 
over  to  the  Midland  in  satisfaction  of  the  huge  ''joint 
liability"  of  this,  as  they  claimed,  "joint  concern!  " 

What  had  become  of  all  the  missing  millions,  and  also 
of  the  earnings  of  the  two  roads  ? 

Certainly  it  was  not  very  hard  for  the  opposing  counsel 
to  guess  ! 

Very  early  in  his  receivership,  Austen  Brown  got  passed 
by  the  State  Legislature  an  act  for  the  incorporation  of  a 
manufacturing  company  in  which  he  himself  was  the 
principal  stock-owner,  and  he  then  bought  out  and  trans- 
ferred to  Belmont  the  various  industries  which  supplied  the 
Midland  system.  This  of  course  ruined  the  village  which 
had  already  grown  up  on  them,  but  the  enterprise  proved 
a  mine  of  wealth  to  President  Brown  and  his  relatives — 
the  heads  respectively  of  the  Belmont  Foundry,  of  the 
Belmont  Rolling-mill  and  of  the  Belmont  Car-factory,  for 
these  gentlemen  sold  to  the  railroads  they  themselves 
were  managing,  and  whose  best  interests  Austen  Brown 
was  under  oath  to  defend,  rails,  car-wheels,  engines  and 
cars  at  prices  higher  than  those  of  any  manufacturers  in 
the  country. 

Austen  Brown,  moreover,  leased  in  his  own  name  a 
little  road  which  was  a  shorter  cut  than  a  certain  detour  of 
the  Midland,  sent  all  the  Midland  and  Montreal  freight 
over  it  at  enormous  rates,  and  pocketed  the  profit ! 

In  order  to  obtain  all  the  business  possible,  a  feeder  for 
the  main  line  was  built  north-eastward  into  Canada, 
various  cross-roads  of  the  State  were  cajoled  or  threatened 


26o  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

into  the  system,  and,  largest^  venture  of  all,  a  New  York 
road  with  a  terminus  on  Lake  Erie  was  leased  to  the  west- 
ward, and  to  the  south  one  was  obtained  in  the  Connecti- 
cut valley  with  a  terminus  on  Long  Island  Sound.  Then, 
with  the  co-operation  of  the  propellers  through  the  great 
lakes  and  of  the  boats  on  the  Sound,  President  Brown 
could  start  his  freights  at  Chicago  and,  by  way  of  Ogdens- 
burgh  and  over  the  Midland  (including  his  own  short  cut 
of  course),  finally  unload  them  in  New  York. 

It  was  really  splendid — such  ramification  of  energy  and 
triumph  from  an  obscure  and  remote  country  village ! 
Nor  was  the  village  itself  forgotten — in  a  way !  In  that 
masculine  joy  of  building  which  is  the  brother  of  the  fem- 
inine love  of  adorning,  Austen  Brown  provided  for  the 
prospective  commerce  of  Belmont  a  station  so  large  that 
there  were  not  at  the  time  two  of  equal  size  in  Boston 
itself!  A  twin  project  was  a  modern  hotel,  the  '*  Austen 
House,"  built  facing  the  village  green — for  the  beloved 
railroad  was  certain  at  no  distant  time  (so  prophesied 
President  Brown)  to  pour  a  golden  stream  of  summer 
guests  into  the  little  place  ! 

If  millions  of  the  Midland  capital  were  missing,  and  if 
it  were  millions  more  in  debt,  surely  here  were  outward 
and  visible  signs  enough  to  account  for  some  of  them — to 
say  nothing  of  the  conspicuous  development  of  the  wealth 
and  prestige  of  President  Brown  himself,  and  apparently, 
of  some  of  the  Brown  connection ! 

For  from  the  time  when  the  interlacing  Brown  fortunes 
began  to  swell  from  the  fact  that,  as  a  disgusted  stock- 
owner  remarked,  ''the  Midland  dumped  its  money  car  in 
the  Browns'  back- yard  " — as  a  family  the  Browns  deserted 
the   common   Belmont   level,    and    planted    their   ample 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  261 

square  mansions  on  the  brow  of  the  before-mentioned  rise 
of  North  Top  from  the  Belmont  main  street.  They  not 
only  planted  them.  As  years  went  on  they  enlarged  and 
altered  them  over  and  over  again  with  skilled  labor  from 
the  Midland  work-shops,  until  these  ostentatious  homes 
had  quite  out-grown  any  adequate  use  they  were  likely  to 
make  of  them.  From  the  higher  hills  behind  them  they 
brought  water  for  their  water-works  and  indulged  in  foun- 
tains and  Scotch  gardeners  and  conservatories.  They  went 
into  fancy  farming  on  a  luxurious  scale,  and  patted  their 
high-bred  horses  in  stables  far  more  costly  than  the  houses 
any  of  themselves  had  been  born  in. 

With  wealth  came  the  natural  appanages  of  wealth — . 
political  place  and  power.  President  Brown  was  elected 
governor  of  the  State  several  times  in  succession ;  in 
all  local  elections  his  work-people  in  Belmont  voted  to 
please  him,  and  as  his  ambition  had  come  to  include  the 
vast  future  of  the  Northern  Pacific  railroad,  his  cousin 
and  nearest  neighbor,  George  Brown,  was  kept  in  Con- 
gress for  several  terms,  ostensibly  to  gratify  Belmont 
pride  and  public  spirit,  but  really  to  lobby  for  the  Brown 
interest  in  the  great  enterprise. 

Something  far  more  precious,  therefore,  than  public 
ventures  and  private  luxuries  had  been  purchased  with  the 
missing  Midland  millions,  or  like  a  beckoning  mirage  the 
Brown  wealth  would  never  have  arisen  from  the  Belmont 
soil  to  lure  and  dazzle  the  Belmont  heart ! 

What  was  it? 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

HOW  "swells"  are  evolved. 

When  for  the  second  time  the  Midland  stopped  paying 
the  rent  of  the  Montreal  road  and  the  latter  brought  suit 
against  the  ''Board  of  Receivers  and  Managers  of  the  Mid- 
land Through  Line" — so  clear  and  strong  was  the  case 
against  them,  that  the  simple-minded  Canadians,  accus- 
tomed to  Old,  not  New  England  justice,  never  doubted 
of  immediately  winning  their  cause. 

To  their  amazement,  neither  the  local  Court  nor  later 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  would  grant  them  any 
arrears  of  rent  whatever. 

''Very  well  then,  if  we  are  to  have  no  rent,  we  must 
have  our  property  back,"  said  they — and  they  demanded 
the  restoration  of  their  road  into  their  own  hands. 

"Not  so,"  answered  the  Midland  in  a  counter-suit ; — 
"our  joint  roads  have  been  run  for  the  common  benefit. 
They  have  shared  and  shared  alike.  The  accounts  show  a 
deficit  of  four  millions,  and  the  Montreal  is  justly  liable 
with  the  Midland  for  that  deficit.  Until  it  is  made  good 
you  practically  belong  to  us,  and  we  cannot,  shall  not,  let 
you  go." 

The  Canadians  resisted  with  stubborn  energy  this  gigan- 
tic "steal"  only  slowly  to  realize  that  the  State  bar  was 
practically  bought  up  against  them, — nearly  every  lawyer 
in  it,  from  members  of  Congress  down,  being  "  retained  " 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  263 

by  the  Midland ;  that  the  press  was  bought  up — the  State 
newspapers,  with  a  few  brave  exceptions,  being  toadies  of 
the  Midland  president ;  and  that  even  the  Legislature  was 
bought  up — for  by  a  majority  of  seven  votes  it  made 
the  pliant  tool  whose  corruption  on  the  chancery  bench 
had  been  the  very  fulcrum  of  Austen  Brown's  career.  Chief 
Justice  of  the  State  ! 

For  years  and  years  the  stock-owners  of  the  Montreal 
road,  together  with  the  investors  and  capitalists  who  had 
built  and  also  those  who  had  renewed  the  Midland  line, 
fought  and  fought,  and  hung  like  hungry  wolves  about  the 
bar  and  the  bench  behind  which  their  anaconda  enemy 
had  entrenched  himself,  and  all  in  vain.  They  could 
never  get  any  justice — could  never  make  good  their  most 
righteous  claims.  A  great  lawyer  once  opened  his  argu- 
ment for  them  with : 

I  do  not  know,  may  it  please  your  Honors,  that  anything  I  shall 
be  able  to  say  will  be  of  any  use.  It  is  not  of  my  own  choice  that  I  am 
here  to  take  any  further  part  in  this  litigation.  I  am  tired  long  ago  of 
this  unhappy  controversy  and  its  endless  retinue  of  misfortune  and  dis- 
aster. It  has  besmirched  almost  everybody  who  has  had  anything  to 
do  with  it.  It  has  sacrificed  all  the  property  that  has  gone  into  it.  It 
has  been  conducted  for  more  than  twenty  years,  in  my  judgment,  en- 
tirely outside  of  the  principles  and  rules  of  the  law  of  the  land. 

The  contestants  at  last  centred  all  their  hopes  in  the 
final  tribunal  of  the  nation,  but  so  incredibly  armed  at  all 
points  was  President  Brown,  that  to  the  end  he  even  knew 
how  to  prevent  an  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  ! 

In  Austen  Brown's  rural  State,  money  is  regarded  with 
a  reverence  proportioned  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  it, 
and    this   man's   acquisition    of  millions,   whether    fairly 


264  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

or  Otherwise,  made  him  ^  kind  of  fetich.  Never  was 
a  more  pronounced  case  of  one-man,  one-corporation 
power  in  a  community  !  His  fellow-citizens  seemed  spell- 
bound by  his  audacity.  The  small  fry  in  the  Midland  net 
fared  as  badly  as  the  big  fish.  Midland  transportation 
and  fares  were  high,  and  Midland  trains  chronically  be- 
hind. Impossible  to  get  damages  for  delays  or  injuries  to 
freight !  As  against  the  Midland  no  wronged  customer 
could  find  a  lawyer  to  take  charge  of  his  case.  Let  him 
ask  whom  he  would,  in  his  own  village  or  any  other,  he 
got  the  same  answer: — '^I'd  rather  not  touch  it," — or, 
*'I  don't  care  about  taking  hold  of  it."  This  rich 
*^  Governor  Brown,"  in  fact,  was  practically  a  State  in- 
stitution, and  though  men's  curses  were  deep  and  women's 
tears  bitter  over  the  bonds  which  through  him  had  turned 
to  waste  paper  in  their  grasp,  no  hand  was  lifted  and  no 
tongue  wagged  openly  against  him. 

The  futile  years  of  litigation  went  by,  and  when  the 
law-guarded  financier  got  ready,  he  made  the  contesting 
Midland  bond-holders  a  characteristic  anaconda  proposi- 
tion. **  Come  !  "  said  he,  in  substance,  "  let  by-gones  be 
by-gones.  Much  of  the  property  is  gone.  It  can't  be  re- 
covered. What's  the  use  of  further  wrangling?  Better 
take  what  is  left  and  re-organize.  Let  us  form  a  new 
company  under  the  title  of  the  '  Through  Midland  Line ' 
instead  of  the  'Midland  Through  Line,'  and  let  us  all 
take  shares  in  proportion  to  our  former  investments." 

So  many  of  the  original  investors  had  died  off  that  it 
was  almost  a  new  generation  to  whom  he  made  these  over- 
tures. The  corporation  quarrels  of  the  fathers  are  seldom 
those  of  the  sons,  and  the  compromise  of  little  for  much 
was  accepted.     Midland  and  Montreal  stocks  and  bonds 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  265 

were  alike  almost  worthless,  and  something  was  better 
than  nothing.  As  is  so  often  the  case,  the  wrong  went 
on  and  flourished  while  the  right  silently  gave  up  the 
ghost ! 

One  more  spoliation  wrought  by  the  Midland  managers 
against  their  own  and  future  generations,  points  to 
the  fabled  dragon  which  ever  blasted  the  entire  region 
upon  which  he  lighted,  as  the  true  prototype  of  many 
a  modern  corporation.  Wood  was  plenty  and  cheap 
when  the  Midland  road  was  opened,  and  it  was  started 
with  wood-burning  locomotives  which  were  retained 
for  forty  years  later — though  during  this  period  they  de- 
voured forest  after  forest  of  the  lovely  little  State,  and 
in  consequence  dried  up  many  of  its  ponds  and  dash- 
ing brooks,  made  languid  streamlets  of  its  exquisite  rivers, 
lowered  its  perfect  lakes,  and  gave  to  it  a  frequent  curse 
of  summer  drouth  with  all  its  blighting  accompaniments, 
while  powerless  hearts  could  only  look  on  and  sigh  over 
the  ruin  of  divine  nature  by  the  greed  of  ruthless  man  ! 

In  its  last  analysis  superior  wealth  is  frequently  the 
product  of  some  one  superior  mind  joined  to  superior 
power  of  work  and  of  self-denial,  and  fortified  by  a  very 
inferior  conscience. 

Primeval  forests,  weaker  corporations,  confiding  bond- 
holders, the  law  and  also  the  gospel  had  gone  down 
before  the  remarkable  organizing  talent,  the  graspingness, 
the  industry  and  the  patience  of  Austen  Brown — for  his 
office-hours  were  often  fifteen  out  of  the  twenty-four,  and 
his  daily  mail  was  one-half  complaints  and  threats. 

But  so  bound  and  involved  together  are  human  fortunes, 
that,  even  if  he  would,  a  man  cannot  promote  only 
his  own. 


266  yElV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

This  financier's  life  wor^  was  not  merely  that  he  built 
himself  up  into  a  capitalist  and  a  power.  Owing  to  him 
his  native  State  possessed  a  complete  railroad  system 
largely  owned  and  officered  within  its  own  borders;  nis 
native  village  had  trebled  in  population  and  importance; 
while  of  its  residents  a  few  of  his  very  ordinary  relations 
were  able  to  surround  themselves  with  more  beautiful 
grounds,  to  live  in  finer  houses,  dress  more  expensively, 
drive  smarter  equipages  and  take  longer  journeys  than 
their  neighbors,  and,  most  absurd  and  unjust  of  all,  for 
these  and  no  other  reasons  whatever,  to  look  down  on 
those  neighbors! 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 


THE    MRS.    BROWNS. 


Austen  Brown  had  married  a  schoolmate  whose  father, 
like  his  own,  had  been  in  the  Yankee  sense  one  of  the 
"smart"  men  of  Belmont — so  that  this  Miss  Rebecca 
Lyman  was  a  prospective  heiress.  Husband  and  wife 
were  congenial  in  their  Calvinism,  in  their  pseudo-cul- 
ture and  in  their  thrift.  Perhaps  these  wove  the  mys- 
tic bond  between  them,  for  to  their  fellow-creatures  they 
were  externally  a  singularly  unbeautiful  pair. 

Like  the  brilliant  and  gifted  Miss  Ashurst,  Mrs.  Brown 
had  been  a  pupil  of  the  same  noted  provincial  ''semin- 
ary "  that  afterward  "  finished  "  Fanny  Dexter;  but  from 
the  Empire  State  she  had  not  brought  away  a  single  one 
of  the  graces  which  make  its  women  so  attractive.  Thin, 
joyless,  in  face  prematurely  old,  in  figure  stamped  with 
unredeemable  New  England  angularity,  and  moreover  a 
wretched,  comfortless  housekeeper,  she  was  a  woman  his 
enemies  might  have  pitied  Austen  Brown  for  possessing, 
were  it  not  that  he  seemed  thoroughly  happy  and  satisfied 
with  her,  and  was  ever  a  most  loyal  husband.  The  secret 
perhaps  was  that  with  all  her  imperfect  womanliness,  she 
was  yet  womanly  enough  to  be  entirely  devoted  to  him. 
In  her  eyes  Austen  Brown  was  beyond  criticism,  and  from 
the  trust,  reverence  and  adoration  which  are  the  tests  of 
genuine  wifehood,  a  man  can  bear  and  forego  a  good  deal. 


2  68  NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

His  cousin,  George  Austin,  was  to  outside  appearance 
more  fortunate.  In  a  gay  village  across  the  lake  he  had 
found  a  comely  and  pleasant  young  lady  of  gentle  New 
York  blood,  and  after  her  marriage  her  family  circle  was 
further  made  attractive,  and  in  Belmont  eyes  distinguished, 
by  the  frequent  presence  in  it  of  a  handsome  widowed 
sister  and  her  fair  young  daughter,  of  whom  the  previous 
home  had  been  in  New  York  city.  Another  Brown  scion 
— a  nephew  named  Henry  Austen — had  taken  to  himself 
a  highly  exclusive  young  woman  and  reputed  heiress  from 
Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  Austen  Brown's  sister  was 
married  to  Mrs.  Austen  Brown's  brother,  Edwin  Lyman, 
and  this  gentleman  was  the  president  of  a  savings  bank 
which  the  ''great"  Brown  had  organized  for  Belmont. 

From  the  lovely  hillside  to  which  they  had  betaken 
themselves,  these  four  families  looked  down  not  only  upon 
the  broad  valley  and  mountain-bounded  lake,  but,  when 
once  the  clever  and  unconquerable  Ashursts  had  gone, 
upon  all  their  fellow-townsmen  and  women  as  well — and 
with  the  most  lofty  and  deprecating  indifference.  If  Mrs. 
Dexter  excited  the  Belmont  imagination,  the  Brown  fam- 
ily filled  it.  They  were  the  real  magnates  of  the  place — 
the  rich  material  of  its  prosperity  and  pride.  She  was  the 
festive  but  unsubstantial  trimming — the  pleasant  gauze  and 
frippery  of  the  village  triumph. 

They  were  not  a  unit  among  themselves — the  Brown 
ladies.  By  no  means.  On  their  Olympian  height  there 
was  private  war  and  feud  between  Mrs.  Austen  Brown  and 
Mrs.  George  Brown — a  feud  of  hatred  on  the  one  side, 
of  contempt  on  the  other. 

Mrs.  George  never  read  anything  but  a  semi-occasional 
novel,  nor  pretended  to  be  anything  but  domestic ;  conse- 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  269 

quently,  Mrs.  Austen  despised  her  as  unintellectual  and 
narrow-minded,  if  not  frivolous.  On  her  side  Mrs. 
George  heartily  detested  Mrs.  Austen  as  a  would-be  blue 
stocking,  and  a  most  ridiculous,  stingy  and  futile  woman. 

Mrs.  Austen  had  talent  above  the  average,  but  so  infin- 
itely more  bombast  and  conceit,  that  the  talent  served 
only  to  make  her  absurd.  At  the  State  capital,  during 
the  successive  years  of  her  husband's  governorship,  she 
aspired  to  be  a  ''  power,"  and  made  such  a  point  of  con- 
versing oracularly  on  political  and  religious  subjects  with 
the  members  of  the  Legislature,  that  she  was  a  dread  and 
a  laughing-stock  to  them  all.  She  went  often  to  Boston, 
which  she  supposed  was  to  dip  into  wells  of  culture,  just 
as  Mrs.  Dexter  fancied  that  boarding  in  New  York  was 
equivalent  to  being  in  the  vortex  of  fashion,  and  when 
Governor  Brown  definitely  retired  from  the  cares  and  per- 
quisites of  State,  his  consort,  nothing  abashed  by  the 
fact  that  her  only  son  was  the  unmarried  father  of  two 
children  by  different  low-class  mothers,  opened  in  Bel- 
mont a  Bible  class  for  young  men,  and  enlightened  them 
with  the  deep  results  acquired  in  her  sojourns  near  the 
legislative  halls  of  her  own  State  and  of  Massachusetts. 

Her  religious  lectures  were  chiefly  a  reproduction  of 
James  Freeman  Clarke's  "Ten  Great  Religions,"  but  she 
really  believed  herself  a  profoundly  illuminated  and  spirit- 
ual person,  and  at  her  own  expense  issued  these  lectures  in 
book  form  for  the  benefit  of  the  race.  In  the  same  way 
she  published  also  a  religious  novel  called  ''Iduna," 
which  in  the  depths  of  her  heart,  though  it  was  in  prose, 
she  valued  as  practically  a  continuation  of  Milton's  '*  Par- 
adise Lost. ' '  The  time  was  before  the  deluge ;  the  char- 
acters were  angels,  mortals  and  gorgeous  fiends,  and  the 


2/0  NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

stage-setting  was  amid  t)orphyry  halls,  golden  thrones, 
dazzling  pageants — in  short,  adjectives  and  adverbs  on  a 
spectacular  and  sensational  "  spree !  " 

A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing.  While  Mrs. 
Austen  Brown  was  trying  to  condense  her  undisciplined 
and  nebulous  conceptions  of  Scripture  and  of  history  for 
the  benefit  of  the  great  outside  world  in  which,  for  want 
of  originality  and  force,  she  could  only  be  a  cipher,  the 
little  inner  worlds  whose  vital  centre  as  wife  and  mother 
and  leading  social  factor  she  was,  and  in  which  she  could 
have  played  a  part  of  untold  beneficent  importance,  went 
year  by  year  literally  to  rack  and  ruin. 

Too  proud  to  send  her  children  to  the  village  public 
schools — too  saving  to  pay  for  their  tuition  otherwhere,  she 
kept  up  an  ostentation  of  '^directing  their  studies  at 
home,"  in  consequence  of  which,  not  only  was  her  boy 
never  prepared  for  or  sent  to  college;  he  remained  so 
densely  ignorant  that  his  early  choice  of  low  companion- 
ships, with  its  revolting  results,  was  hardly  more  than 
natural.  His  sisters,  also,  grew  up  absolutely  too  dull  and 
unattractive  to  marry  in  their  father's  now  capitalist  sta- 
tion. But  Mrs.  ''Governor"  Brown,  as  she  was  gener- 
ally called,  walked  with  her  head  so  in  the  clouds,  that 
she  could  not  perceive  the  exceptional  deficiencies  of  her 
offspring.  Her  goat  was  a  lamb — her  geese  swans — and 
she  was  quite  as  likely  to  allude  enthusiastically  to  the 
moral  worth  of  her  dissolute  son  as  she  was  to  the  poetic 
charm  of  her  dowdy  daughters. 

As  for  her  duty  to  Belmont — though  she  dwelt  in  an 
enormous  house,  flashily  decorated  by  the  Midland  car- 
painters  regardless  of  (Midland)  expense — though  it  stood 
amid  velvet  swards  blooming  with   costly  plants — rarely 


NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  271 

did  a  single  flower  find  its  way  to  a  Belmont  neighbor — 
more  rarely  did  any  Belmont  guest  cross  its  arrogant 
threshold.  The  mean  pretentious  help-meet  of  the  ex- 
governor  reserved  her  hospitality  exclusively  for  her  hus- 
band's financial  and  political  guests  from  elsewhere. 
Once,  indeed,  her  great  vulgar  mansion  was  actually 
thrown  open  for  a  general  reception  to  a  distinguished  Re- 
publican statesman.  All  Belmont,  in  awe,  trepidation 
and  expectation,  spent  money  to  dress  and  to  go,  and 
nearly  all  Belmont  went  hungry  and  weary  away.  To  a 
favored  few  only,  an  humble  relative  of  the  opulent  host 
had  been  told  to  whisper — ''Stay  and  have  some  supper 
after  the  others  leave." 

The  very  antipodes  of  her  fantastic  cousin-in-law,  Mrs. 
George  Brown  was  nothing  if  not  conventional.  To  a 
soft  and  gentle  manner  she  united  a  satiric  tongue  which 
dearly  loved  to  indulge  in  biting  comment  on  her  neigh- 
bors, and  she  brought  up  her  children  not  only  to  aspire 
to  the  city  world  to  which  they  did  not,  but  to  despise  the 
country  world  to  which  they  did  belong. 

She  was  the  niece  of  an  eminent  New  York  jurist,  and 
— true  daughter  of  the  Empire  State  in  this, — "  position  " 
was  her  idol.  Before  she  came  to  Belmont  nobody  had 
thought  anything  about  "aristocracy"  or  the  "  best  so- 
ciety." Kindly  New  England  fashion,  everybody  knew 
everybody  else  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  "drawing  the 
line"  was  undreamed  of. 

But  the  new  comer  felt  herself  beneath  the  mantle  of 
her  departed  uncle's  distinction,  and  her  intense  instinct 
was  that  this  distinction  must  be  maintained  and  trans- 
mitted. She  returned  her  wedding  calls,  and  after  that, 
dropping  nearly  all  the  list  on  the  plea  of  the  exacting 


272  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

cares  of  young-motherhood i  she  lived  in  and  for  her  fam- 
ily, and  neither  gave  nor  accepted  invitations.  If  her 
children's  misfortune  doomed  them  to  an  obscure  Yankee 
village,  the  obscure  Yankee  village  should  have  nothing  to 
do  with  them  nor  they  with  the  obscure  Yankee  village, 
and  she  would  have  died  rather  than  have  them 
fall  so  disgracefully  below  the  Blackstone  traditions  as 
Mrs.  Austen  Brown's  children  were  falling  below 
'^  even'' — as  Mrs.  George  said  with  a  sniff,  ^^\}[it  Brown 
traditions  !  " 

While  young,  therefore,  her  little  ones  had  a  governess ; 
later,  the  boys  were  sent  away  to  school  and  to  college,  and 
the  girls  were  "finished"  in  New  York.  When  they  were 
all  grown  their  mother  considered  they  did  her  credit,  for 
though  she  had  had  to  struggle  with  the  difficulty  of  three 
hundred  miles  from  the  metropolis,  they  could  not  have 
been  told  from  Fifth  Avenue  fashionables.  In  fact,  they 
were  fashionables.  The  youthful  family  was  not  only 
well-conducted,  well-mannered,  well-dressed — the  boys 
nice-looking,  the  girls  pleasing.  Theirs  was  the  identical 
stamp  of  refinement,  of  distinction,  of  superficiality — the 
small  head,  small  features,  small,  firm,  unsympathetic 
mouth — so    often   seen   among   our   high   metropolitans  ! 

Their  pretty  cousin,  May  Stanton,  was  married  'and  es- 
tablished in  a  pretty  house  in  the  heaven  of  Madison  Ave- 
nue, and  this  urban  refuge,  together  with  annual  visits  to 
various  friends  of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness  like 
themselves,  gave  to  their  aristocratic  lungs  breathing  place 
sufficient  for  existence  at  least.  Their  father's  two  con- 
gressional terms  in  Washington  did  the  rest,  and  so  far  as 
their  native  village  was  concerned,  placed  the  George 
Browns  on  such  a  sky-piercing  pinnacle,  that  to  Belmont 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  273 

eyes  they  were  practically  invisible,  and  the  Belmont  im- 
agination almost  ceased  to  follow  them. 

Crushing  as  were  these  Belmont  swells  at  home,  the 
poor  little  town  would  have  tasted  a  sweet  revenge  could 
it  have  realized  how  drearily  insignificant  they  seemed  in 
the  national  capital,  even  to  themselves.  Mr.  George 
Brown,  pere,  was  never  known  to  open  his  lips  during  his 
whole'four  years  of  service,  and  in  fact  he  did  not  scruple 
to  be  absent  from  his  duties  most  of  the  time.  He  was  a 
political  nobody,  and  his  wife  and  daughters  were  social 
ones.  The  charming  and  cultivated  Ashursts,  who  had 
never  put  on  any  airs  in  Belmont,  but  had  loved  and  been 
identified  with  it,  now  made  Washington  their  home,  and 
it  was  with  bitterness  and  perplexity  that  the  George 
Browns  saw  them  sought  for  and  invited  everywhere,  while 
with  twice  their  income  and  many  times  their  preten- 
sion, their  would-be  exclusive  selves  were  left  to  the  frigid 
formalities  of  the  outer  congressional  circle  merely. 

Yes, — the  Browns  had  twice  the  money  of  the 
Ashursts,  but  they  did  not  know  one  quarter  as  well  what 
to  do  with  it — and  how  many  rich  Americans  are  in  a 
similar  sad  predicament ! 

A  year  or  two  ago  I  noticed  one  morning  that  a  ''  Mrs. 
Blank  of  Newport,  reputed  worth  twenty-five  millions," 
had  been  robbed  of  some  family  silver.  I  said  to  myself 
— *•  Who  on  earth  is  Mrs.  Blank  of  Newport?  " — for  I  am 
a  devoted  newspaper  reader,  and  I  had  never  heard  of  her. 

Tivenly-jlve  inillions !  Surely — a  woman  so  rich  as  that 
ought  to  be  so  radiant  a  centre  of  everything  that  can  give 
happiness  and  joy,  that  she  ought  to  be  known  all  over 
the  civilized  world!  And  thus  known  no  doubt  ''Mrs. 
Blank  of  Newport ' '  would  love  to  be,  had  she  only  a  con- 


2  74  NEW  YORK.    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ception  how.  But  in  general^  the  rich  are  unaware  that  it 
takes  as  much  thought  and  effort  and  a  far  more  liberal 
training  to  spend  money  than  it  does  to  make  it ;  and  so, 
instead  of  centres  of  light,  they  live  centres  of  darkness 
precisely  on  the  principle  of  a  heaped-up  anthracite  fire 
with  too  little  wood  to  kindle  it,  which  for  a  time  struggles 
but  blackly  in  ineffectual  smoke,  and  at  last  goes  black  out 
in  ignominious  death !  The  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt's 
phrase — ''the  ignorant  rich,"  especially  as  coming  from 
one  himself  of  the  rich,  was  magnificent.  It  simply  indi- 
cated the  greatest  social  evil  of  this  and  of  all  previous 
time ! 

To  the  "  ignorant  rich"  certainly  belonged  the  potent 
and  influential  people  of  Belmont  we  have  been  consider- 
ing. Not  a  perception  of  what  they  might  and  ought  have 
been  to  their  own  village  ever  dawned  upon  either  Mrs. 
Austen  or  Mrs.  George  Brown.  Like  stony  opposing 
precipices  they  frowned  at  each  other  and  watched  at  their 
feet  alike  the  turbid  flow  of  Belmont  business  life  and  the 
stagnant  pools  of  its  social  existence,  and  exerted  not  one 
energy  to  purify  the  one  or  animate  the  other. 

They  felt  no  womanly  responsibility  about  the  common- 
est decencies  of  hospitality.  Mrs.  George  Brown  confined 
her  Belmont  intimacies  to  the  cousin-residents  on  the  hill, 
who,  like  herself,  were  of  the  "best  society"  from  their 
earlier  provincial  homes  elsewhere.  The  three  families 
formed  the  high,  almost  inaccessibly  "aristocratic"  circle 
of  the  little  place,  while  Mrs.  Governor  Brown,  shunned 
by  them  all,  dwelt  alone  in  a  self-satisfied  glory,  unbroken 
save  by  the  timid  calls  of  the  relatives  and  toadies  who  oc- 
casionally crept  up  the  steep  incline  to  sun  themselves  in 
the  chill  rays  of  her  remote  prosperity.     She  was  much 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  275 

out  of  town,  and  so  self-absorbed  when  in  it,  that  neither 
her  goings  nor  her  comings  were  of  any  importance  to 
anybody.  Nevertheless,  in  case  she  did  show  herself,  so 
enveloped  was  she  in  the  glamor  of  her  husband's  mil- 
lions, that  she  could  go  to  the  refreshment  table  at  an  Or- 
thodox church  fair,  loftily  put  down  half  the  price  of  a 
rich  cake  that  was  being  sold  in  slices,  and  carry  the 
rest  of  it  off  without   anyone   venturing   to   withstand   her! 

Thus  getting  all  they  could  and  keeping  all  they  got, 
and  letting  every  hospitable  and  kindly, — still  more,  every 
moral,  artistic  and  intellectual  interest  of  the  little  town 
take  care  of  itself — the  Browns  set  a  fearful  example  which 
from  their  position  and  power  was  sure  to  be  followed. 
Selfishness  was  the  root,  the  stem,  the  flower  and  conse- 
quently the  fruition  of  their  lives,  and  the  baneful  seed 
they  remorselessly  dropped  into  their  neighbors'  hearts 
sprang  up  an  hundred-fold. 

What  the  Browns  and  the  Dexters  were,  nearly  every- 
body ''  who  was  anybody  "  in  Belmont  came  more  or  less 
seriously  to  wish  and  to  strive  to  be. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

THE   "shadows   we  PURSUE  !" 

To  Mrs.  Dexter's  purblind  vision,  the  pre-eminence  of 
the  Ashursts  had  ever  been  a  mystery.  She  acknowledged 
it,  because  it  was  so  evidently  there,  and  no  one  could 
have  been  more  enthusiastic  over  Ashurst  gifts  and  graces 
than  she,  nor  more  punctilious  in  rendering  them  every 
social  homage.  But  she  did  not  understand  their  leader- 
ship enough  either  to  envy  or  desire  it.  Only  so  much 
fortune  as  they  possessed,  if  she  were  to  have  any  at  all, 
would  not  have  satisfied  her. 

The  prestige  of  the  Browns,  on  the  contrary,  was  en- 
tirely comprehensible. 

"  Money  and  family  " — of  course  !  What  more  did  or 
could  constitute  the  '*  best  society  ?  " 

True  that  both  Mrs.  Austen  Brown  and  herself  were 
such  wild  moral  eccentrics — ''cranks,"  we  should  now  call 
them — that  each  felt  but  scorn  and  repugnance  for  the 
other.  Mrs.  Austen's  musty,  gloomy,  half- kempt  house- 
keeping and  tasteless  dressing  were  a  horror  to  Mrs.  Dex- 
ter; Mrs.  Dexter's  tinsel,  make-shift  prosperity  a  disgust 
to  Mrs.  Austen.  After  their  mutual  rise  to  Belmont  emi- 
nence, Mrs.  Austen  rarely  deigned  to  call  on  Mrs.  Dexter, 
and  Mrs.  Dexter  declared  in  the  family  bosom  (only)  that 
< '  she  perfectly  despised  to  have  her. ' ' 

* '  To  think  of  such  a  woman  having  money-a-h  !  ' '  she 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  277 

would  sigh,  with  her  hand  on  her  heart  and  in  her  eye  a 
mild  reproach  against  an  undiscriminating  Providence. 

Mrs.  George  Brown,  on  the  other  hand,  commanded 
Mrs.  Dexter' s  unqualified  envy  and  deference.  ''She  was 
highly  connected  in  Noo  Yawk  with  the  very  best  people ; 
and  oh,  was  there  ever  a  love-lier  girl  than  May  Stanton — 
a-h  ?  ' '  Josephine  Dexter  had  early  taken  the  ' '  lovely 
girl"  for  her  principal  model,  and,  as  I  have  said,  had 
caught  to  perfection  her  contralto  speaking  voice  and  her 
low,  not  musical  laugh.  Miss  Stanton  was  a  pink-and- 
white  masterpiece  of  high  paste-board  conventionality  as 
evolved  by  the  unceasing  ''deportment"  admonitions  of  a 
vigilant  mama,  added  to  the  expensive  privileges  of  Mad- 
ame Maintien's  French  school  for  young  ladies.  At  eigh- 
teen she  had  married  a  Mr.  Hoffman — a  well-born  New 
Yorker  of  her  own  set  and  quite  of  her  own  intellectual 
calibre  ;  but  she  and  her  mother  continued  to  spend  every 
summer  at  the  George  Browns',  when  Josephine  Dexter 
invariably  devoted  herself  to  her,  amiably  regardless  of  the 
fact  that  this  darling  friend  and  her  maternal  relatives  with 
difficulty  brought  themselves  to  bestow  upon  the  Dexter 
mansion  a  single  ceremonious  call  per  year  in  Belmont. 
In  New  York  they  all  but  ignored  Josephine  and  her 
mother,  though  the  Dexters  and  the  Howes  now  boarded 
together  every  season  either  in  Fifth  or  in  Madison 
Avenue. 

But  naturally,  for  nieces  of  Chancellor  Blackstone  to 
exchange  metropolitan  civilities  with  young  women  who 
never  so  pretty  and  modish  and  their  present  prosperity 
never  so  promising — was  out  of  the  question! 

When  one  is  getting  up  in  the  world  one  mustn't  mind 


278  NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

snubs.  Mrs.  Dexter  shut  her  eyes  to  the  town  incivilities 
of  the  Belmont  grandees  lest  they  should  be  repeated  in 
the  country,  and  continued  cheerfully  on  the  coruscating 
way  that  was  gradually  but  surely  rousing  Belmont  femi- 
ninity to  aspirations  like  her  own. 

Had  she  been  really  rich,  like  the  ''hill"  people,  it 
would  not  have  been  so  hard  to  bear.  But  her  means 
were  no  more  than  those  of  her  circle  generally,  and  so 
one  after  another  began  to  wonder  if  she  must  always  be  a 
grub  when  a  Mrs.  Dexter  could  soar  into  a  butterfly  ?  In 
proportion  to  their  individual  severity  her  acquaintance 
spoke  of  her  as  ''mean,"  "insincere,"  "a  fool,"  "a 
snob,"  "a  fraud,"  "a  liar,"  and  held  up  hands  of  holy 
horror  at  the  disgraceful  habits  into  which  she  had  gradu- 
ally driven  her  husband  by  persistently  depriving  him  of 
home  and  family  for  about  nine  months  of  every  year. 
But  it  would  not  have  been  human  nature  not  to  emulate 
such  fascinating  success — not  to  long  to  shine  something 
after  the  brilliant,  jubilant  Dexter  manner  ! 

In  one  thing  Mrs.  George  Brown  and  Mrs.  Dexter  were 
perfectly  agreed.  They  always  spoke  of  Belmont  with  the 
bitterest  contempt,  and  the  fashion  set  by  these  two  lead- 
ers everybody  followed.  "Yes,  of  course,  Belmont!'^ 
the  Belmont  women  would  exclaim  to  each  other  with  in- 
effable disgust  at  any  little  shortcoming  in  their  neighbors, 
and  would  then  go  on  living  wholly  to  themselves  as  the 
Browns  and  the  Dexters  lived. 

In  large  cities,  families  can  more  or  less  do  this  without 
getting  dull  and  bored,  because  there  are  so  many  outside 
resources.  But  hospitality  is  the  very  breath  of  village 
life,  and  as  the  new  Belmont  leaders  refrained  from  enter- 
taining, the  pleasant  ' '  high  teas  ' '  of  snowy  biscuit,  deli- 


NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  279 

cate  tongue,  oyster  scallop,  golden  coffee,  ideal  cake 
and  translucent  preserves  which  in  the  friendly  Ashurst 
days  people  used  often  to  give  each  other,  became  almost 
things  of  the  past.  If  women  who  had  plenty  of  servants 
would  not  take  any  trouble  to  make  their  neighbors  happy, 
certainly  those  who  had  but  one,  or  none,  were  not  going 
to  do  it ! 

When  Display  comes  in  at  the  door,  Neighborliness  flies 
out  of  the  window,  and  our  village  became  a  poor  little 
travesty  indeed  !  In  every  thousand  persons  there  are  al- 
ways those  who  have  a  special  gift  for  literature,  for  music, 
for  art,  the  drama  and  the  dance.  As  Voltaire  expressed 
it: — ''Genius  lies  about  the  streets."  If  rural  localities 
would  organize  for  it,  they  could  develop  within  them- 
selves all  the  delights  of  eye  and  ear  and  mind  which  now 
are  sought  almost  exclusively  in  the  galleries  and  audito- 
riums of  cities, — country  life,  meantime,  being  deprived  of 
those  endeavors  to  produce  the  beautiful  and  the  inno- 
cently joyous  which  are  so  necessary,  not  only  to  human 
happiness  but  to  human  virtue, — since  ' '  Man  doth  not 
live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth 
out  of  the  mouth  of  God," — the  good  Evangelical  preach- 
ers to  the  contrary  notwithstanding  ! 

The  most  genuine  pleasures  of  human  existence  were 
within  reach  of  the  Belmont  women  had  they  only  been, 
conscious  of  it ;  in  winter,  talking  and  card  parties,  danc- 
ing and  musical  parties  in  their  homes,  or  lectures  and 
readings,  amateur  theatricals  and  concerts  and  subscrip- 
tion balls  in  the  Town  Hall ; — in  summer,  driving,  riding 
and  walking  parties  and  picnics  amid  the  loveliness  of 
their  surrounding  scenery.  The  musical  talent  of  Bel- 
mont, indeed,  was  something  exceptional.     It  could  boast 


28o  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

of  several  charming  pianists,  an  excellent  glee  club  and  an 
aspiring  brass  band,  and  once  the  young  people  did  in 
fact  combine  to  give  a  quite  surprisingly  good  perform- 
ance of  ' '  Pinafore  !  ' ' 

But  as  the  Evangelical  pastors  of  Belmont  thought  cards 
and  dancing  and  theatricals  '  *  sinful, ' '  and  as  the  Belmont 
social  leaders  cared  nothing  for  Belmont  pleasures  and 
Belmont  home  talent,  so  neither  did  the  Belmont  rank 
and  file  care  for  them,  and  the  anxious  feminine  aim  grew 
to  be  to  enlarge  and  embellish  their  houses,  to  dress  fash- 
ionably at  church  and  when  paying  calls,  and  above  all, 
to  be  often  absent  from  Belmont — nay,  if  possible,  to 
leave  "Behnonil"  altogether. 

Where  was  the  money  for  these  costly  cravings  to  come 
from? — for  Mrs.  Dexter' s  unscrupulous  financiering  was  as 
impossible  to  the  correct  souls  of  most  Belmont  women  as 
to  their  timid  minds  would  have  been  her  bold  push  for 
New  York  in  the  first  place.  But  the  brilliant  Dexter 
departure  in  the  art  of  spending  gradually  impressed  their 
husbands  much  as  it  did  themselves,  and  in  time  these 
latter  began  to  emulate  the  Brown  departure  in  the  art  of 
getting.  Somehow,  money  must  and  should  be  had,  and 
plenty  of  it ! 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

''THE    DAY    IS    PAST    AND    GONE." 

As  we  have  seen,  Mrs.  Dexter  influenced  her  daughter 
Josephine  to  break  her  engagement  with  her  youthful  lover 
so  summarily, — even  although  he  belonged  to  one  of  the 
"first  families"  in  Cleveland,  because  she  had  no  faith 
that  the  McCloud  fortunes  would  soon  recover  themselves, 
and  she  wanted  Josephine  to  lose  as  little  time  in  getting 
engaged  again  as  possible.  But  to  her  sorrowful  surprise, 
though  flirtations  were  always  on  the  tapis,  no  serious  can- 
didate for  the  young  lady's  hand  loomed  above  the  Dexter 
horizon  for  several  years. 

In  this  prolonged  agony  of  making  bricks  without  straw — 
for  to  the  end  of  his  life  Mr.  Dexter  was  more  or  less  "un- 
able to  collect" — Mrs.  Dexter's  flatteries  and  suavities 
toward  the  George  Browns  had  always  the  possible  end  in 
view  that  through  Mrs.  May  Stanton  Hoflhian's  sponsor- 
ship, Josephine  might  some  day  gain  an  entrance  into 
"real"  New  York  society;  and  indeed,  had  the  former, 
by  even  the  least  narrow  crack,  set  ajar  the  social  door  to 
Josephine's  little  serpentine  head — had  this  insinuating 
youngest  Dexter  been  invited  only  to  one  party  where  she 
could  have  met  a  few  New  York  eligibles — there  is  no  tell- 
ing upon  what  round  of  the  social  ladder  she  would  now 
be  coiling.  But  Mrs.  George  appreciated  the  danger  and 
resolutely  discouraged  her  niece's  occasional  kindly  im- 


282  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

pulses  to  be  the  open  New  York  sesame  to '' Ma;/ woman 
or  any  of  her  brood  !  "  One  winter  poor  Mrs.  Dexter 
actually  had  rooms  directly  across  the  street  from  Mrs. 
Hoffman's,  and  marked  and  speculated  upon  every  carriage 
that  drew  up  before  her  house, — but  all  in  vain.  The 
longed-for  citadel   never  compromised  an  inch. 

No  loophole  of  hope,  therefore,  being  found  for  Joseph- 
ine in  the  direction  of  the  charmed  circles  of  the  aristoc- 
racy, her  mother's  ambition  was  relegated  to  the  sphere  in 
which,  unluckily  for  her  after  aspirations,  it  had  first  start- 
ed, and  which  the  haughty  and  clever  little  Julia  had  so 
doubtfully  entered — the  purely  and  somewhat  humbly  com- 
mercial. 

Mr.  James  Harold  Baldwin,  though  born  in  Connecticut, 
was  a  very  Parisian-looking  foreign  buyer  for  a  wholesale 
millinery  firm.  Flowers  and  feathers, laces  and  velvets,  silks 
and  fancy  straws — what  associations  could  better  fit  a  man 
for  intercourse  and  companionship  with  the  Dexter  mind? 
In  the  casual  interview  of  an  evening  party  this  kindred 
spirit  came,  saw  and  conquered  the  pretty  Josephine,  and 
was  conquered  in  return. 

The  acquaintance  before  the  engagement  was  brief,  and 
so  was  the  engagement  itself.  There  was,  indeed,  every 
reason  for  hurrying  it,  as  the  young  man  had  as  much  in- 
come as  he  was  soon  likely  to  command,  Josephine  her- 
self was  close  on  twenty-six — (her  mother  told  Mr.  Bald- 
win she  was  twenty- three)  and  her  poor  father's  purse, 
as  well  as  her  poor  mother's  invention,  cried  out  for  a  rest 
from  their  labors  in  her  behalf. 

The  wedding  was  Mrs.  Dexter' s  last  great  effort  for 
Belmont.  Her  old  friends  had  long  ago  been  alienated  by 
her  airs  and  pretensions,  and  they  did  not  now  come  for- 


NEW  YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  283 

ward  in  neighborly  fashion  to  provide  the  marriage  supper 
as  on  the  two  similar  events  of  her  life.  But  Fanny's  ex- 
ecutive ability  and  energy  being  there  to  help,  the  thing 
was  successfully  managed.  Julia  was  dead,  and  her  beauty 
and  elegance,  alas !  could  not  grace  the  occasion,  but  for 
the  first  time  in  years  Mr.  Calvert  succumbed  to  the  family 
pleading  that  he  should  come  to  Belmont  and  lend  his 
handsome,  brilliant  face  to  the  wedding  party.  He  was  in 
business  for  himself  now,  and  was  supposed  to  be  growing 
rich ;  besides,  he  was  soon  to  marry  an  heiress,  so 
that  money-bitten  Belmont  gazed  upon  him  with  much  in- 
terest and  respect. 

Josephine  was  faultlessly  costumed  in  heavy  white  silk 
poetized  by  lace  and  orange-wreaths  and  a  cloud  of  tulle. 
She  had  no  bridesmaids,  but  the  festal  New  York  robes  of 
Mrs.  Dexter  and  Fanny,  of  Fanny's  and  Julia's  little  girls, 
and  of  Mr.  Baldwin's  two  married  sisters,  made  a  suffi- 
ciently resplendent  and  crushing  effect  Flowers  adorned 
the  altar  and  the  chancel,  and  the  Browns  and  the  other 
select  friends  whose  cards  invited  them  to  the  house  after- 
ward, were  in  the  front  pews  in  light  silks  and  without 
bonnets,  just  as  they  should  have  been.  Instead  of  the 
lovely  American  hour  of  twilight,  Mrs.  Dexter  would 
gladly  have  had  the  wedding  at  the  fashionable  but  absurd 
English  one  of  noon ;  but  the  hopelessness  of  getting 
poor  little  rustic  Belmont  out  in  the  middle  of  the  day 
in  its  best  clothes,  daunted  even  her  devotion  to  the 
highest  social  usage. 

As  in  her  misty  veil  Josephine  glided  down  the  aisle  to 
Mendelssohn's  Wedding  March  on  the  organ  (even  that 
had  Belmont  got  to  !)  her  black  lashes  on  her  crimson 
cheek,  her  snowy  draperies  trailing  behind  her,  she  looked 


284  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

a  charming  vision  of  refineci  grace  that  should  have  won 
grace  even  from  the  graceless.  But  no.  As  Mrs.  Dexter 
laid  her  weary  but  triumphant  head  on  her  pillow  after 
this  climax  of  weddings — so  "elegant,"  so  ''stylish"  as 
she  felt  it  had  been — and  with  Josephine,  her  last  great 
burden  and  care,  her  stone  of  Sisyphus,  off  her  hands  at  last, 
it  was  quite  with  the  feeling,  ''  Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy 
servant  depart  in  peace," — when,  horror!  her  ears  were 
stricken  by  a  hideous  din  of  tin  horns  blowing  and  tin 
pans  beating,  actually  beneath  the  bridal  windows ! 

The  boorish  son  of  a  rich  neighbor,  who  years  ago  had 
sunk  below  society  in  Belmont,  but  who  had  long  medi- 
tated vengeance  on  Mrs.  Dexter  for  her  upstart  ways,  had 
assembled  a  masked  group  of  congenial  spirits  on  "the  steps 
of  the  Dexter  mansion,  and  was  calling  a  burlesque  roll  of 
the  ''aristocratic"  invited  guests  to  this  exclusive,  select 
wedding,  beginning  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Austen  Brown.  To 
each  name  a  companion  roared  a  jeering  "  Here  !  "  when 
more  blowing  of  horns  and  beating  of  pans,  interspersed 
with  such  remarks  as  ' '  Libby,  why  don' t  you  pay  your 
grocer's  bill  ?  You  know  they  wouldn't  let  you  have  any 
butter  when  you  sent  for  some  last  week."  "  Libby,  we're 
going  to  leave  you  a  codfish,  else  you  won't  have  any 
breakfast."  ''Say,  Mrs.  D.,  give  us  some  crumbs  from 
the  master's  supper-table,  if  you  have  any  left."  "No, 
she  hasn't.  She  always  counts  noses  too  closely  for  that." 
"Well,  then,  give  us  some  of  the  old  man's  whiskey. 
There's  plenty  of  that  left  over  for  to-morrow.  Trust 
him — ha  !  ha  !  ha  !  "  — until  at  length  the  outraged  bride- 
groom himself  appeared  at  the  front  door  to  ask  what  he 
had  done  that  he  should  be  treated  in  such  a  way  on  his 
wedding  night? 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  285 

Is  it  or  is  it  not  true  that  the  misdoer  has  always  an  ad- 
equate punishment  even  in  this  world  ?  If  not  the  whole, 
in  her  agony  of  mortified  vanity  over  this,  to  her,  terrible, 
inconceivable,  overwhelming  insult  and  disgrace,  poor 
Mrs.  Dexter  certainly  had  a  vivid  foretaste  of  whatever 
retribution  she  might  deserve.  All  Belmont  would  ring 
with  it,  and  all  her  sons-in-law — even  Calvert,  who  hated 
Belmont  so  that  he  had  kept  away  from  it  for  ten  years — 
were  witnesses  to  it !  She  had  intended  that  this  lovely, 
this  artistic,  this  high-toned  social  event  should  be  her 
practical  exit  from  Belmont — her  exit  in  a  blaze  of  glory  ! — 
for,  Josephine  married,  she  would  never  keep  house  again. 
She  was  growing  old,  and  so  was  Mr.  Dexter.  His  re- 
sources and  her  energies  alike  were  running  low.  But 
now  ! — oh — oh — she  could  never  overlive  this — never  do 
anything  to  make  people  forget  it !  Poor  woman !  She 
writhed  on  coals  of  fire  that  night  and  many  a  wakeful  one 
after.  Pier  Nemesis  had  come  for  a  visit,  at  least,  and  she 
could  exclaim  ^^  Belmont  I''  with  a  bitterer  accent  than 
ever.  So  unconscious  are  we  all  that  the  antagonisms 
and  rebuffs  we  meet  with  are  rather  due  to  our  own  defects 
than  to  the  native  despite  of  our  fellow-creatures ! 

As  Josephine's  wedding  was  Mrs.  Dexter' s  last  great 
effort  for  Belmont,  so  Josephine's  trousseau  was  her  last  great 
effort  for  her  children.  To  its  demands  everything,  even 
to  risking  in  a  pawn-shop  George  McCloud's  much  longed- 
for,  much-enjoyed,  much-valued  diamond  ring,  was  sacri- 
ficed— and  what  that  and  the  now  rather  slender  Howe 
and  Calvert  contributions  did  not  cover,  Mr.  Baldwin 
-defrayed  as  a  ^'privilege"  while  he  was  still  in  the 
beatitude  of  young  hus])and-hood — Josephine  confessing 
to    him,    weeping,     her    unspeakable    mortification    and 


286  NEW  YORK.    A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

surprise  that  her  father  had  not  the  wherewithal  to 
do  so,  owing  to  the  business  failure  of  one  of  his  largest 
clients  but  two  weeks  before  her  marriage.  "Indeed," 
she  continued,  "mother  has  just  written  me  that  she 
believes  the  revenge  of  one  or  two  Belmont  storekeepers 
whom  for  the  same  reason  she  could  not  pay  at  that  time, 
was  at  the  bottom  of  that  wicked  charivari  on  our  wed- 
ding-night. Belmont  people  are  so  avaricious  !  Deprive 
them  of  their  money  and  they  are  like  tigers !  But 
father  says  he  is  going  to  be  all  square  again  by  the 
end  of  the  year,  so  it  will  only  be  a  loan — Jim — dear  ! 
You  are  so  sweet  to  pay  it !  " 

"Jim"  knew  better,  but  he  did  not  care.  He  was  a 
pleasant,  shrewd,  thrifty,  commonplace  nature  who  saw  at 
once  through  Mrs.  Dexter,  Fanny,  and  the  whole  of  them, 
but  did  not  at  all  dislike  what  he  saw.  He  fancied  Jo- 
sephine, and  so  he  had  married  her.  But  he  wasn't  going  to 
trust  her  as  Howe  had  trusted  Fanny — not  he.  He  was 
obliged  to  go  to  Europe  twice  a  year,  and  twice  a  year  he 
took  Josephine  with  him,  nolens  volens. 

After  a  few  trips  they  understood  each  other  perfectly. 
She  soon  picked  up  French  enough  to  make  her  way  round 
Paris,  and  as  her  whole  mind  was  concentrated  on  clothes, 
her  dressing  reached  an  ideal  of  fashionable  and  poetic 
charm,  which,  for  the  money  spent  upon  it,  could  not 
have  been  surpassed.  Her  success  in  smuggling  laces  for 
her  liege  was  worthy  of  the  mother  that  bore  her,  and 
more  cannot  be  said.  Her  card-playing,  too,  came  in 
splendidly  on  the  steamers,  and  not  merely  pour 
passer  le  temps  j  either!  The  national  game  of 
draw-poker  might  have  been  hatched  within  her  own 
dainty    little    head — so    perfectly    did    it    fit  every    inlet 


NEW  YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  287 

and  outlet  of  her  tranquil,  treacherous,  adventurous 
spirit. 

The  pair  lived  on  both  sides  at  the  best  hotels,  and  were 
the  best  friends  in  the  world.  When  the  fond  husband 
was  not  by,  the  Lamia-like  wife  would  flirt  with  any  well- 
dressed  man  of  any  age  that  happened  to  be  about,  but  as 
Mr.  Baldwin  took  good  care  never  to  be  away  too  long,  no 
practical  harm  ever  ensued.  Mrs.  Dexter  gradually  got 
over  the  tingling  mortification  of  that  awful  wedding- 
night,  and  found  herself  happier  in  this  last  marriage 
than  she  had  in  either  of  the  others.  Josephine,  thank 
goodness !  had  no  children,  so  she  had  no  care  nor  anxiety 
for  her  daughter  on  that  score.  She  had  no  one's  wants 
to  provide  for  except  her  own,  and  by  the  aid  of  Joseph- 
ine's London  and  Parisian  bargains  for  her,  she  was  able  to 
assume  a  freshness  and  richness  of  attire  that  well  became 
her  stately  form  and  those  silver  hairs  which  had  long  left 
off  their  raven  dye.  She  was  an  impressive  figure,  even  in 
Fifth  Avenue — such  an  incarnation  of  ' '  deportment ' '  as 
is  seldom  seen  ! 

After  Josephine's  marriage  she  gave  up  housekeeping 
forever,  and  as  her  spirit  shook  off"  the  base  shackles  insep- 
arable from  the  prices  of  butter  and  beefsteak,  the  pucker- 
ings  about  her  eyes  and  mouth  smoothed  into  the  lofty 
serenity  of  an  unruffled  existence.  In  winter  she  boarded 
near  or  in  the  house  with  her  youngest  darling,  and  in 
summer  she  staid  at  the  Austen  House  in  Belmont  with 
Mr.  Dexter,  the  motherless  Clara  Calvert  also  being  often 
of  the  party. 

Her  delight  in  Josephine's  Paris  clothes  was  perennial, 
as  all  the  heart's  deepest  things  ever  are.  Nothing  in 
America  could  go  much  beyond  them,  she  was  well  con- 


288  NEW  YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

vinced,  and  as  she  looked  bapk  to  the  sprawly-figured  ten- 
cent  calicoes  in  one  or  two  a  year  of  which  she  used  to 
live  and  work  all  day  in  Belmont  until  the  hour  came  to 
dress  for  tea  in  a  twenty-five  cent  delaine  or  well-worn 
merino,  and  then  contemplated  Josephine's  panoply  of 
costumes,  one  at  least  for  every  occasion — her  embroidered 
and  be-laced  peignoirs  and  negligees — her  walking-dresses 
and  carriage-dresses — her  reception  and  ball  toilets,  and 
the  lolling  sofa-life  that  accompanied  them  all — her  heart 
swelled  with  a  great  and  virtuous  sense  of  what  she  had 
done  for  her  children  ; — and  how  hard,  too,  it  had  been, 
— gracious  ! — how  hard  it  often  had  been  ! 

So  the  weeks  rolled  into  months,  and  the  months  glided 
by  into  years,  and  after  not  very  many  of  these  years  of 
rest  and  release  from  scheming  and  care,  it  suddenly 
appeared  that  Mrs.  Dexter' s  life-work  was  done.  She  was 
spending  the  summer  in  Belmont,  herself  and  husband 
boarding,  for  once,  with  a  married  cousin,  when  the  end 
came  with  only  a  few  days  of  warning,  and  those,  days  of 
such  deadly  illness  that  a  blur  of  physical  sensation  must 
have  been  all  the  stricken  one  was  capable  of  feeling. 

The  clearest  possible  possession  of  her  faculties,  how- 
ever, would  have  wrought  no  difference  in  this  death-bed. 
She  had  no  consciousness  of  wrong  or  sin  in  anything  she 
had  done.  She  had  ever  lived  in  a  world  of  her  own 
creating,  and  her  *' right"  was  simply  that  which  she 
wished  to  do.  Her  old  acquaintance,  Mr.  Ashurst,  re- 
marked when  he  heard  of  her  death, — that  he  had  no 
doubt  the  consciousness  that  Josephine's  clothes  came  from 
i  aris  would  be  a  comfort  to  her  even  in  Paradise ! 

In  two  or  three  years  Mr.  Dexter,  poor,  whiskey-ridden 
old  man,   was  laid  beside  her.     To  the  astonishment  of 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  289 

everybody  he  left  not  many  debts,  and  when  these  were 
settled  there  actually  remained  over  two  thousand  dollars 
to  be  divided  between  his  daughters.  Had  he  kept  a 
small  hoard  in  hiding  as  conscience-money  against  poor 
Tim's  possible  re-appearance  ?  The  secret  perished  with 
him. 

The  spiritual  is  sure  to  express  itself  in  the  material,  and 
between  two  graves  in  the  Belmont  cemetery  is  a  snowy 
shaft  on  opposite  sides  of  which,  and  each  with  its  ap- 
propriate name  and  date  beneath,  are  cut  simply  the 
words — '*  Father  " — *'  Mother." 

None  others  could  have  so  plead  the  intense  and  all- 
absorbing  motive  of  the  two  lives  so  deeply  sleeping 
there, — their  love,  their  deathless  love  for  their  children. 


^ 


THE  HOWES. 


CHAPl^ER   XXXIV. 


If  Fanny  Dexter' s  mother  had  been  like  other  Belmont 
mothers,  her  sprightly  child  would  have  been  kept  at  the 
village  academy  with  the  boys  and  girls  of  her  own  age 
until  she  had  learned  all  it  could  teach  her.  Following 
this  would  probably  have  been  the  several  years  of  local 
bellehood  to  which  her  fascinations  and  talent  for  dress 
predestined  her.  Among  the  rustic  victims  to  her  charms, 
her  native  sympathy  foi  strength  and  "  go  "  would  prob- 
ably have  drawn  her  to  the  most  energetic  and,  therefore, 
the  most  promising  of  them  all.  The  two  would  have 
married  and  begun  life  in  a  cottage  with  one  servant  or 
none.  Before  very  long  the  irrepressible  expansion  of 
young  New  England  in  the  new-born  railroad  era  would 
have  carried  them,  as  it  did  others  of  Fanny's  village  circle, 
to  some  upspringing  Western  town,  possibly,  let  us  say,  to 
the  now  mighty  Chicago  itself. 

Starting  in  with  the  chances  of  success  which  the  com- 
manding position  of  Chicago  poured  down  upon  her  earlj 
citizens,  our  youthful  pair,  part  and  parcel  of  a  society  as 
fresh  and  eager  as  themselves,  would  have  made  common 
cause  in  the  founding  and  building  of  their  farnily  for- 
tunes. A  man  of  her  own  age,  of  her  own  calibre,  and 
after  her  own  heart — such  a  husband  for  Fanny  Dexter 
would  from  the  first  have  made  his  alert  helpmeet  his 
business   confidante  and   counsellor,   and   she,   responsive; 


.NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  291 

and  interested,  would  have  been  as  thrifty  and  saving  on 
her  side  as  he  was  hardworking  and  enterprising  on  his. 

Together  they  would  have  won  their  way  upward  from 
the  foot  of  the  financial  ladder  until  he  became  one  of  the 
moneyed  magnates  of  his  adopted  city,  and  she  one  of 
the  luxurious,  travelled,  and  intelligent  dames  who  are  its 
recognized  leaders  whether  in  social  functions,  club  pro- 
jects, or  church  charities.  Nay,  in  the  *' Columbian" 
year  of  1893  we  would  probably  have  beheld  her  a  power 
on  that  celebrated  "Board  of  Lady  Managers"  whose 
uninstructed  zeal  got  together  so  interesting  though  so 
ineffective*  a  collection  of  the  arts  and  achievements  of 
their  sex. 

But  to  our  poor  Fanny  was  not  permitted  such  normal 
American  development.  Her  childish  head  too  early  filled 
with  pleasure  visions  of  "  Noo  Yawk ;  "  sent  for  a  brief 
time  to  a  popular  boarding-school  for  ''young  ladies" 
only ;  married  at  eighteen  to  a  man  ten  years  her  senior 
and  already  a  partner  in  a  long-established  firm;  as  her 
vocation,  given  the  spending  of  money  with  no  definite 
confidences  as  to  whence  it  came — surely  it  was  not  sur- 
prising that  little  Mrs.  David  Howe  floated  irresponsibly 
along  the  sunny  tide  of  her  life  without  much  questioning 
of  her  conjugal  pilot,  until  suddenly  she  found  her  house- 
hold bark  a  wreck  and  herself  practically  stranded  on  the 
beach. 

And  why  ?  Largely  because  while  David  Howe  had  had 
two  pairs  of  eyes  with  which  to  watch  for  breakers,  two 
pairs  of  hands  to  help  with  the  wheel,  he  had  used  only 
one — his  own.  He  lived  his  life  and  Fanny  lived  hers, 
each  quite  ignorant  of  the  other's  methods  of  accomplish- 
ing their  respective  daily  ends.  They  had  always  seen 
*"'  Ineffective  "  because  unscientific — i.e.^  incomplete  and  unclassified. 


292  NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

existence  so  arranged  in  tVie  country  villages  of  their 
birth  and  rearing.  The  men  spent  the  hours  between  meals 
at  their  trades  or  their  trading,  and  the  women  stayed  at 
home  over  their  housekeeping.  In  the  great  metropolis 
life  was  arranged  on  the  same  general  lines,  only  much 
pleasanter.  The  husband  disappeared  down  town  for  the 
entire  day  to  toil  for  money,  but  this  money  was  ex- 
pended, not  grudgingly  on  a  plainly-dressed,  hard-handed 
matron  who  paid  back  more  than  its  full  value  in  care 
and  sewing  and  housework,  but  lavishly  on  the  supreme 
aesthetic  of  a  pretty  and  exquisitely  dressed  wife,  enshrined 
in  a  home  which  was  the  expression  of  all  her  own  dainty 
and  luxurious  tastes. 

So  it  never  occurred  to  the  chivalrous  and  devoted  mer- 
chant that  his  **  little  housekeeper"  was  possessed  of 
remarkable  business  talent  and  perception  which  might 
splendidly  supplement  his  own.  In  his  mind  a  woman's 
sphere  was  her  own  family,  her  calling-list,  her  charities, 
and  her  church  pew.  The  man's  sphere  was  all  the  rest  ol 
the  world  to  exploit  for  her,  himself,  and  the  children,  as 
best  he  could.  Thus  David  Howe  worked  blindly  along 
the  old  lines  until  the  convulsions  of  the  new  era  tore 
these  from  under  him,  and  hurled  his  domestic  partner 
from  the  place  and  the  life  she  loved  into  conditions 
so  untoward  that  her  boredom  and  disgust  led  her  into 
temptation  first  and  ruin  afterward. 

In  a  splendid  saying  quoted  by  Ruskin,  Sydney  Smith, 
that  almost  wisest  of  men,  declared  that  '*  the  fire  of  our 
minds  is  like  the  fire  which  the  Persians  burn  in  the  moun- 
tains ;  it  flames  night  and  day,  and  is  immortal  and  not  to 
be  quenched!  Upon  something  it  w/zj-/ act  and  feed — 
upon  the  pure  spirit  of  knowledge  or  upon  the  foul  dregs  of 
polluting  passions." 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHOXIC   STUDY.  29  ^ 

Fanny  Howe's  mind  was  too  untaught  for  its  "  fire  "  to 
have  been  attracted  by  the  ''  pure  spirit  of  knowledge;  " 
but  a  gift  for  business  enterprise  is  also  an  intellectual 
one.  Nature  never  meant  this  woman  for  a  sensualist. 
She  was,  before  everything,  an  intelligence,  an  activity,  a 
force,  and  anything  administrative  was  intensely  fascinat- 
ing to  her. 

As  we  have  seen,  even  housekeeping  scarcely  afforded 
scope  for  her  admirable  executive  ability.  She  could  have 
managed  an  institution,  a  big  hotel,  an  extensive  enter- 
prise. She  was  born  to  plan  and  to  give  orders.  She  was 
not  used  to  economize  by  stitching  or  working  with  her 
own  hands.     All  that  she  hated. 

For  the  sewing-machine  had  come,  and  the  pretty  con- 
sort of  the  generous  New  Yorker,  along  with  the  upper  ten- 
dom  of  her  sex  generally,  had  been  released  from  the  stern 
necessity  of  personal  labor  on  family  clothing  which  had 
been  her  mother's  and  all  her  foremothers'  chief  occupa- 
tion since  Time  began  ;  and  yet 

"  To  finger  the  fine  needle  and  nice  thread" 

was  all  the  ivork  her  new  barnacle  phase  of  fashionable 
boarder  offered  her,  though  like  the  immortal  Britomart 
herself,  rather  than  be  tied  down  to  its  petty  and  weari- 
some slavery,  Fanny's  adventurous  spirit 

"  Liever  would  with  point  of  foeman's  spear  be  dead  !  " 

The  true  theory  of  marriage  is  that  it  is  a  friendship  to 
which  are  added  the  ecstasy,  the  exaltation,  and  the  exclu- 
siveness  of  passion.  The  essential  factors  of  friendship 
are  sympathy  and  confidence  ;  yet  few  elements  are  oftener 
absent  from  the  attempts  at  married  love  than  these.    Little 


294  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

V 

wonder  the  civilized  world  is  asking,  and  almost  answering 
in  the  affirmative, — *'  Is  marriage  a  failure  ?  " 

"  All  love  that  has  not  friendship  for  its  base 
Is  like  a  mansion  built  upon  the  sand  ; 
Though  brave  its  walls  as  any  in  the  land 
And  all  the  turrets  lift  their  heads  in  grace," 

So  sings  a  popular  authority  on  the  subject  of  love,  Ella 
Wheeler  Wilcox,  and  nothing  in  the  Gospel  itself  is  more 
true.  The  infinite  soul,  with  its  infinite  possibilities,  must 
mate  with  infinite  soul,  or  it  is  not  mated  at  all.  The 
plane  of  the  sexes — that  on  which  they  were  created  and 
were  intended  to  abide,  and  to  which  eventually  they  must 
return — is  the  plane,  not  of  the  senses,  as  men  think,  nor 
of  the  affections,  as  women  believe,  but  the  plane  of  the 
mind;  i.e.,  the  plane  of  responsible  intelligences  who 
respect  themselves  and  equally  respect  each  other;  hence 
the  plane  of  freedom  and  achievement  and  the  only  plane 
of  deathless  joy  and  love.  For  we  cling  to  no  one  as  we 
do  to  him  or  her  who  helps  us  to  be  or  to  do  something 
from  our  own  proper  gift  and  force  ! 

A  self-made  man  of  millions  once  told  a  friend  of  mine 
that  he  had  no  belief  in  the  stock  stories  of  husbands  em- 
barrassed and  ruined  by  the  extravagance  of  their  wives. 
''Ninety-nine  times  out  of  a  hundred,"  he  said,  "men 
fail  owing  to  bad  investments  they  never  would  have  made 
if  they  had  advised  with  the  woman  side  of  the  house. 
My  rule  has  always  been  to  tell  my  wife  as  much  about  my 
business  as  I  know  myself.  I  consult  her  on  all  business 
ventures,  and  I  rarely  lose  money  except  when  I  go  con- 
trary to  her  judgment." 

And  this,  no  doubt,  not  because  the  lady's  judgment 
was  any  better  than  her  husband's,  if,  indeed,  it  were  as 


NEir    YOKA':   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  295 

good;  but  bimply  because  it  was  another  judgment.  She 
looked  at  things  from  an  equally  interested  but  different 
point  of  view,  and  so  she  could  not  fail  to  throw  light 
upon  every  pending  decision. 

In  the  spirit  of  his  country's  institutions,  this  wise 
millionnaire  regarded  marriage  not  as  an  affair  of  blind 
unquestioning  trust  on  the  one  hand,  and  gently  absolute 
despotism  on  the  other,  but  as  one  of  friendship,  "  sweet 
reasonableness,"  and  representative  government — as  in  fact 
that  ''  committee  of  two  "  which  a  prominent  divine  lately 
declared  is  precisely  what  marriage  can  7iot  be — and  his 
reward  and  his  happiness  were  in  due  proportion  to  this 
the  only  true  view  of  the  infinitely  difficult  relation. 

Would  that  plighted  lovers  could  first  be  confidential 
friends  who  freely  exchange  views,  aims,  sympathies  and 
antipathies  on  all  the  interests  of  their  lives,  and  who, 
becoming  at  last  personally  devoted  through  this  frank  inti- 
macy, betroth  themselves  with  the  mutual  understanding 
which  precedes  every  other  important  partnership  of  human 
life.  But  many  men  incorporate  with  themselves  that 
complex,  self-determining  entity  called  a  *'  human  being," 
as  they  would  fasten  a  plume  on  their  crest  or  a  flower  in 
their  button-hole,  as  they  would  buy  a  fawn  for  a  paddock 
or  a  goldfish  for  a  glass  bowl,  or  as  they  would  set  up 
a  Madonna  over  a  shrine.  To  David  Howe  a  wife  was  a 
combination  of  ornament,  pet,  and  household  divinity  who 
through  him  was  to  have  everything  she  could  possibly 
need  for  her  social  station,  and  was  not  at  all  to  trouble 
her  feminine  brain  as  to  where  it  came  from. 

^Vhile  he  never  questioned  her  domestic  arrangements, 
he  made  her  understand  perfectly  that  his  quid  pro  quo  was 
that  she  should  never  question  his  business  ones.  So  when 
he  found  the  wants  of  this  ornamental  charmer  more  exten- 


296  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

sive  than  he  had  expected,  and  for  her  sake  began  to  dream 
of  outside  investments  that  would  enable  him  to  gratify 
them — to  consult  the  person  who  was  chiefly  dependent 
upon  his  success,  and  who  would  certainly  be  the  greatest 
sufferer  should  he  make  a  mistake,  never  entered  his  mind. 

Yet  if  David  could  seriously  have  consulted  Fanny — 
which  IS,  of  course,  the  greatest  tribute  that  man  can  pay  to 
woman,  and  also  the  rarest  he  ever  does  pay  to  her — if,  in 
the  beginning,  the  proud  and  happy  bridegroom  had  taken 
the  airy  bride  into  his  intimate  business  confidence,  so 
earnest  a  respect  for  her  would  have  invoked  an  answering 
one  for  him.  Out  of  the  jungle  of  petty  ambitions  and 
low  aspirations  in  which  her  youth  had  been  cradled, 
Fanny's  heart  would  have  shot  up,  straight  and  vigorous  as 
a  young  pine,  to  meet  his  own,  and  in  the  end  David  Howe 
would  really  have  won  his  wife,  and  with  her,  too,  success 
even  in  the  arduous  enterprise  of  founding  a  family  in 
their  fiercely  competing  and  difficult  New  York.  Yes, 
Fanny's  hT5usehold  economies  alone  would  have  saved  him. 

No  doubt  the  American  husband  enjoys  this  role  of 
family  autocrat  who  has  a  perfect  right  to  do  what  he  will 
with  his  own ;  of  family  deus  ex  machina,  to  whom  no  one, 
not  even  the  mother  of  his  children,  shall  say  **  yes,  aye, 
or  no"  about  his  bread-winning.  But  in  my  long  and 
weary  pilgrimage  I  have  not  met  one  woman  developed  or 
made  better  or  happier  by  it,  and  how  many  wives  and 
daughters  have  I  seen  dwarfed  and  belittled,  others  humili- 
ated and  paralyzed,  and  not  a  few  embittered,  tortured, 
and  even  crushed,  from  being  obliged  to  force  themselves 
into  whatever  compass  the  *Mord  and  master"  of  their 
destiny  decrees  ! 

As  for  the  undisciplined  Fanny,  from  the  time  she  lost 
her  one  moral  anchor,  her  housekeeping,  the  **  fire  "  of  her 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  297 

mind,  *'  immortal  and  not  to  be  quenched,"  crept  stealth- 
ily about  in  search  of  something  whereon  it  could  "  act 
and  feed,"  finding  this  first  in  dangerous  and  compromis- 
ing pleasures,  then  in  *'  polluting  passions,"  until  in  the 
end  its  long-smothered  flame  conquered  even  her  strong 
natural  prudence,  and  it  was  now  ready  to  burst  forth  over 
her  husband's  head,  in  one  lurid  hour  to  reduce  his  home, 
his  heart,  and  his  life  to  ashes. 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 


DISCOVERY. 


This  is  a  man's  world,  and,  accordingly,  society,  by 
which  we  practically  mean  those  bonded  slaves  called 
*' women,"  no  matter  how  it  may  gossip  about  a  wife, 
will  generally  recognize  her  so  long  as  her  husband  stands 
by  her.  In  Belmont,  Fanny  Howe  was  believed  capable 
of  anything,  but  when  she  went  there  in  summer,  her  old 
friends  still  treated  her  much  as  they  had  before.  For 
David  Howe's  sake  no  one  cast  the  first  open  stone. 
People  thought  he  was  blinded,  but  they  would  not  unde- 
ceive him. 

He  was  not  exactly  blinded.  Husbands  and  wives  rarely 
are  in  such  cases.  Simply,  the  heart  often  refuses  to  draw 
the  conclusions  which  the  reason  points  out.  This  pure 
and  high-toned  man  had  lived  through  every  phase  of 
wedded  disillusion  and  disappointment — from  the  rapture 
and  exaltation  of  admiring  and  adoring  love,  through  the 
dawning  fear  that  he  had,  after  all,  married  a  very  imper- 
fect woman  instead  of  an  almost  perfect  angel ;  through 
the  freezing  conviction  that  Fanny  did  not,  and  never  had, 
really  loved  him ;  through  the  patient  endurance  of  con- 
sistent selfishness  and  wilfulness,  down  to  a  toleration  of 
the  rivals  ("  friends  "  she  called  and  he  believed  them) 
who  each  in  his  day  was  the  real  interest  of  her  existence. 

But  never  did  he  look  his  fate  in  the  face,  nor  ask  him- 
self what  was  the  meaning  of  the  web  of  mystery  that  hung 


■NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  299 

always  about  his  wife — of  these  notes  and  souvenirs,  these 
flowers  and  attentions,  that  infested  the  atmosphere  wherein 
she  dwelt,  and  which  certainly  were  not  from  him.  He 
quieted  himself  with  the  theory  that  though  thoroughly 
trustworthy  at  bottom,  Fanny  was  an  exceptional  being, 
not  to  be  bound  by  ordinary  rules  and  conventions  nor 
judged  by  ordinary  standards,  and  consoled  himself  in  his 
blank  of  wedded  sympathy  with  his  children,  and  with  the 
devotion  of  his  sister  Jeannette. 

The  secret  was  that  in  his  heart  he  still  loved  the  worth- 
less but  to  him  magnetic  woman.  Fanny  had  personality 
— which  means  that  she  drew  others  to  her  without  being 
drawn  equally  in  return.  Her  able  way  of  doing  every 
thing-  she  undertook,  her  good  looks,  ch  rp  inf^  toilet,  her 
self-dependence,  her  animation — in  short,  deep  as  was 
David's  disappointment  in  Fanny  Dexter,  to  him  she  was 
still  the  most  interesting  of  her  sex.  If  she  could  have 
loved  him  as  he  did  her,  he  could  have  found  in  her  his 
earthly  heaven.  She  had  taken  root  in  his  life  and  flour- 
ished there,  and  to  discard  her  would  tear  the  best  part  of 
it  away.  And  then,  most  quivering  ner\'e  of  all,  she  was 
the  mother  of  his  children.  David  Howe  had  indeed 
tremendous  reasons  for  closing  his  eyes. 

After  the  scarlet  fever  episode  the  pair  never  kept  house 
again.  They  could  not  afford  to*  do  so  in  New  York,  and 
Fanny  simply  wouldn't  anywhere  else.  In  winter  they 
lived  in  hotelsor  fashionable  boarding-houses,  and  in  sum- 
mer, after  Mrs.  Dexter's  farewell  to  housekeeping,  David's 
little  family  alternated  between  the  new  hotel  in  Belmont 
and  the  old  one  at  Belmont  Springs,  which,  greatly  enlarged 
from  the  days  of  Fanny's  first  flirtation  as  a  married 
woman,  furnished  now  an  endurable  cuisine,  and  was  the 
special  summering  place  of  Belmont  swelldom. 


300  NEW    YORK':    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

V 

While  her  parents  lived,  Mrs.  Howe  preserved  some 
respect  for  appearances  during  these  country  sojournings 
away  from  her  liege ;  but  in  the  very  next  season  after  her 
father's  death,  she  seemed  to  lose  all  sense  of  social 
responsibility,  and  her  conduct  became  such  an  offence  to 
the  guests  of  the  Austen  House  that  the  landlord  was  forced 
to  ask  for  her  rooms.  She  drove  over  to  engage  others  at 
Belmont  Springs,  and  the  proprietor  refused  to  receive 
her.  "Miss  Howe,"  said  frankly  the  former  of  these 
men  to  the  horrified  Jeannette,  "  your  sister-in-law  is  not 
what  she  should  be.  Belmont  folks  have  ben  sayin'  it  for 
a  long  time,  and  ef  you  and  Mr.  Howe  don't  know  it,  it's 
time  you  did." 

And  so  the  poor  little  victim  of  Fanny's  daily  selfish- 
ness was  fated  to  be  the  instrument  of  her  oppressor's 
exposure.  She  was  packing  her  trunk  in  order  to  take  the 
next  train  away  from  the  disgraced  woman,  when  the  latter 
came  in,  and  on  her  knees  begged  and  prayed  that  Jeannette 
would  not  turn  family  informer  against  her.  But  to  her 
surprise  andfright  Jeannette  would  promise  nothing.  "  I'm 
going  straight  to  Philip,"  she  answered,  '*and  he  shall 
decide  whether  it  is  right  to  keep  our  poor  brother  in  igno- 
rance of  your  true  character.  /  have  never  been  able  to 
reconcile  your  conduct  with  that  of  virtuous  women;  but 
it  was  not  for  me  to  make  trouble  when  David  seemed  to 
feel  no  jealousy  of  your  admirers.  Now  that  the  world 
has  turned  upon  you,  it  is  different." 

"So,  Miss  Immaculate!"  sneered  the  baffled  Fanny 
just  before  banging  out  of  the  room,  "  you  see  a  good 
chance  now  to  oust  me  and  take  my  place  at  the  head  of 
your  injured  brother's  family,  don't  you  ?  Poor  old  maid  ! 
You'd  never  be  the  head  of  a  family  in  any  other  way,  and 
I  don't  wonder  you're  going  to  grab  for  it !  "     And  then 


A'EIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  Z^l 

Mie  added  to  herself,  "  But  may  be  I  have  a  card  or  two  to 
play  yet,  my  precious  prude  !  " 

An  aunt  of  the  Howes  had  died  in  an  insane  asylum, 
and  this  fact  suggested  the  following  letter,  despatched 
by  Fanny  to  her  husband  as  soon  as  possible  after  her 
stormy  parting  with  Jeannette  : 

Dearest  David  : 

You  will  be  surprised  to  hear  that  Jeannette  has  just  decided  to 
join  the  Philip  Howes  at  the  seashore  and  to  remain  there  during 
August.  She  leaves  for  Boston  on  the  night  train,  and  on  my  part 
I  shall  take  the  morning  express  back  to  you.  I've  had  some  such 
strange  scenes  with  Jeannette,  you  can't  think  !  Do  you  suppose  it 
possible  that  the  insanity  which  is  in  your  family  can  be  coming 
upon  her  ?  I  assure  you  I  was  only  too  glad  to  encourage  her  notion 
of  going  to  Philip  and  Lucy  at  Nantucket.  She  said  she  couldn't 
stand  the  children  any  longer  and  must  rest.  As  if  I  ever  wanted 
her  to  do  anything  she  didn't  insist  on  doing  !  In  fact,  she's  been 
so  jealous  of  the  children  that  long  ago  I  gave  up  the  management 
to  her.  And  the  other  day  she  quite  raved  over  my  "imposing" 
on  her  !  I  feel  completely  used  up  over  it  all,  and  very  lonely,  too. 
Belmont  is  awfully  changed  to  me  with  father,  mother,  and  JuHa  all 
gone,  and  even  Josephine  across  the  water.  Davy,  dear,  I  feel  I 
can't  spend  any  more  summers  away  from  you,  and  I  reproach  my- 
self that  I  have  spent  so  many.  After  all,  who  can  be  so  near  to  a 
woman  as  her  own  kind  and  good  husband,  and  why  should  the 
wife  and  children  be  off  pleasuring  while  the  husband  and  father  is 
working?  After  this,  dearest,  if  you  are  willing,  we  will  pass  our 
summers  together.  Counting  the  hours  until  I  see  you, 
Your  devoted  and  homesick 

Fan. 

'*  I  must  say  a  great  deal  if  I  say  anything  at  all," 
thought  she,  grimly. 

A  thrill  of  purest  joy  went  through  David  Howe's  love- 
starved  soul  as  he  read  these  affectionate  words.  '*Is  it 
possible,"  so  ran  his  thoughts,  **  that  my  gay  and  restless 


302  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


Fanny  has  at  last  come  round  to  my  standpoint,  and  sees 
that  all  these  outside  distractions  can't  compare  with  the 
quiet  love  and  sympathy  of  one  devoted  heart  ?  If  she 
has,  then  I  have  done  well  to  trust  her  as  I  have.  Darling 
little  woman  !  How  glad  I  shall  be  to  see  her  !  To  me 
there's  no  one  like  her,  nor  ever  will  be." 

In  his  life  David  Howe  had  never  been  so  happy  as  he 
was  during  the  month  that  followed.  For  the  first  time 
Fanny  turned  fully  upon  himself  the  alluring,  caressing 
side  so  natural  to  her  with  other  men.  She  was  mortally 
terrified  at  having  been  tabooed  in  Belmont,  and  lived  in 
shivering  fear  of  the  postman,  not  knowing  what  an  hour 
might  bring  forth.  As  her  only  hope  of  salvation,  there- 
fore, she  bent  her  whole  mind  to  the  re-conquest  of  her 
husband,  and  not  only  was  the  effort  not  difficult,  to  her 
surprise  she  found  herself  actually  falling  in  love  with 
him.  David  had  suddenly  become  indeed  her  lord  and 
master,  her  superior,  the  absolute  arbiter  of  her  fate,  and 
to  this  strong  soul,  power  in  any  form  was  ever  the  supreme 
attraction.  **  Why,"  she  asked  herself,  ''  why  had  she  not 
thought  of  it  before  ?  Her  very  own  husband  was  a  man, 
a  gentleman ;  talented,  refined,  generous ;  not  so  rich  as 
she  would  have  liked,  nor  so  tall;  but  still  he  was  very 
nice-looking,  and  he  had  enough  ;  so  much,  in  fact,  that 
she  might  have  made  it  far  more  if  she  had  exerted  herself 
to  save  instead  of  longing  always  to  spend.  In  future  she 
would  do  so  with  all  her  might.  She  would  interest  her- 
self in  his  business.  She  had  a  head  for  business,  she 
knew  she  had.  Davy  had  been  hinting  lately  that  he  was 
getting  out  of  the  woods.  As  soon  as  she  was  sure  she  was 
safe,  she  would  insist  on  perfect  frankness  in  money  mat- 
ters, and  by  uniting  their  energies  she  shouldn't  won- 
der if  they  got  rich  in  ten  years.     Yes,  Davy  certainly 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  303 

combined  as  much  as  any  man  she  had  ever  known.  If  he 
had  his  drawbacks,  so  had  all  the  others.  Ah,  why  had  she 
not  been  satisfied  ?  These  outsiders  had  been  nothing, 
worse  than  nothing,  after  all.  Oh,  if  Jeannette  only  did 
not  tell  on  her,  she  would  never  look  at  another  man  again 
— not  even  Herman  Hardy." 

Thus  the  surface  optimism  of  her  suspense,  though  con- 
tradicted ever  by  a  deep,  hollow  dread  that  in  her  folly  she 
had  honeycombed  the  strong  and  solid  ledge  which  had 
held  her  skyward,  and  that  it  was  but  a  question  of  days, 
perhaps  moments,  when  it  would  roar  down  beneath  her 
feet  to  some  fathomless  abyss  below  !  When  her  husband 
came  home  to  her  every  evening,  still  joyous,  radiant, 
eager,  so  tremendous  was  the  reprieve  of  another  twenty- 
four  hours  that  she  could  have  fallen  down  and  worshipped 
him.  David  Howe  had  never  dreamed  that  any  woman's 
eyes  could  dwell  on  him  so  fondly  ;  that  from  this  woman's 
gaze  such  appealing  softness  r^///^/meet  his  own  ! 

Fanny  further  intoxicated  him  with  daily  declaring  that 
she  had  but  one  wish,  to  have  her  own  little  home,  she 
cared  not  where — Brooklyn,  Staten  Island,  Orange,  even 
Jersey  City  or  Harlem — she  would  go  anywhere  David 
could  afford  if  she  could  only  keep  house  once  more ;  yes, 
even  if  with  but  one  servant.  "And,  David,  dear,"  she 
coaxed,  ''  I  do  think  it  would  be  sweeter,  don't  you,  to  be 
for  a  year  or  two  entirely  alone  ?  I  do  love  Jeannette 
most  dearly,  and  you  know  how  I  have  always  leaned  on 
her  as  the  older;  but  still  I'm  conscious  that,  without  at 
all  knowing  or  intending  it,  she  did  come  between  us.  I 
never  acknowledged  it  before,  but  I  always  felt  a  bit  jeal- 
ous of  her.  She  seemed  to  suit  you  better  than  I  did,  and 
so  I  used  to  feel  I'd  just  let  her  suit  you.  You  were  always 
so.  contented  with  her,  and  it  made  me  want  to  flirt  just  to 


304  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

tease  you.  But  now  I  want  you  all  to  myself.  Why 
couldn't  she  stay  with  Philip  for  a  year,  or  even  take  a 
governess's  place  ?  She  would  be  invaluable  to  anybody. 
I  shouldn't  wonder  if  she  is  thinking  of  it  herself.  You 
see  she  doesn't  write,  and  that  is  so  strange  for  Jeannette. 
The  truth  is  she  has  lived  with  us  too  long,  and  she  requires 
a  change  for  her  own  good,  if  for  nothing  else."  - 

And  so  sped  his  fool's  paradise  along  until  September 
brought  the  Philip  Howe  family  back  to  Brooklyn,  where 
they  lived,  and  soon  after  brought  to  David  Howe  a  large 
envelope  addressed  in  Philip's  hand  and  marked  **  Per- 
sonal." He  found  it  among  a  Saturday  morning  mail  on 
the  table  in  his  inner  office,  and  in  the  brief  following 
sentences  his  fate  at  last  descended  upon  him : 

My  Dear  Brother  : 

If  you  were  surprised  at  Fanny's  sudden  return  to  you  without 
Jeannette,  and  at  the  latter's  continued  silence,  the  dreadful  expla- 
nation is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  which  it  is  my  unhappy  office  to 
announce  to  you,  viz.:  that  in  Belmont  your  wife's  conduct,  in  consid- 
erable disrepute  for  several  years,  reached  this  season  to  such  an  open 
recklessness  that  the  landlord  of  the  Austen  House  was  forced  to  ask 
for  her  rooms  ;  and  when  she  tried  to  engage  others  at  Belmont 
Springs,  they  were  refused  her.  Jeannette  was  so  overwhelmed  with 
the  disgrace,  and  with  the  thought  of  what  it  would  be  to  you,  that, 
not  knowing  what  else  to  do,  she  took  the  first  train  to  us.  Her  news 
was  hardly  a  surprise  to  Lucy  and  myself,  but,  knowing  your  chivalric 
devotion  to  Fanny,  I  decided  to  procure  the  most  absolute  proofs  in 
the  case,  before  risking  the  love  and  harmony  that  as  a  family  we 
have  hitherto  maintained.  So  I  sent  one  detective  to  Belmont,  and 
have  had  Fanny  shadowed  here  by  another  for  the  last  month.  I 
enclose  with  this  the  reports  I  found  awaiting  my  return.  They  seem 
to  leave  no  doubt  as  to  the  propriety  of  the  action  of  the  Belmont 
landlord. 

Be  strong  under  this,  my  brother.      T  will  call  round  shortly  to  find 

wherein  I  can  serve  you. 

Philip. 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.         305 

As  David  Howe  read  this  awful  missive  his  veins  con- 
gealed to  ice,  but  when  he  had  finished  the  documents 
that  went  with  it,  his  heart  burst  into  flames.  In  one 
moment  his  life  had  gone  down  in  a  molten  chaos  amid 
which  but  one  black  thought  stood  out.  The  horrible 
pages  dropped  from  his  grasp  to  the  floor,  and  at  first  he 
sat  staring,  motionless;  then  with  a  cry  sprang  up,  and 
with  hands  clutching  the  hair  above  his  bursting  brain,  he 
began  pacing  the  room  like  a  maniac,  all  unconscious  of 
what  he  was  doing. 

His  brother  entered,  stood,  sat  down,  and  still  the 
maddened  husband  kept  on  in  his  wild  walking.  At  last 
for  a  moment  he  stopped  opposite  the  pitying  Philip  and 
whispered  hoarsely  : 

''She  ought  to  be  killed." 

**  Divorced,  you  mean." 

Lxjudly,  ''  I  said  killed r' 

Philip  Howe  was  astounded.  He  had  expected  to  find 
his  brother  stunned  with  grief  and  shame,  not  frantic  for 
vengeance.  Always  playful  and  joking  in  his  family,  no 
one  had  ever  heard  David  Howe  hint  a  misgiving  or  a 
reproach  against  his  ill-regulated  wife.  Whatever  his  suf- 
fering or  disappointment,  he  had  kept  both  to  himself,  and 
only  the  watchful  Jeannette  had  ever  caught  a  smothered 
sigh  or  suspected  an  indignant  hour.  We  have  all  known 
them,  these  seeming  passionless,  single-minded  American 
husbands,  whose  silent  loyalty  to  wife  and  children  is  the 
inmost  core  of  themselves,  and  David  Howe  was  one  of 
them ;  but  now  in  his  agony  poured  fiercely  forth  the 
lava-wrath  of  many  pent-up  years. 

"■  That  woman  !  "  he  raved  in  the  intervals  of  his  fierce 
striding,  "  whom  I  made  the  axis  of  my  life,  at  first  because 
I  believed  in  her,  and  kept  on  because  I  wouldn't — I — 


306  A'EW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

would — not — disbelieve  in  her  !  For  whom  I've  sacri- 
ficed myself — toiled  night  and  day  for  years — deprived 
myself  of  everything — allowed  our  gentle  sister  to  suffer 
from  her  selfishness  and  petty  tyranny — and  all  that  she 
might  live  in  the  softness  and  idleness  she  loved.  Who 
brought  me  nothing — not  a  heart,  for  she  has  none ;  not 
sweetness,  for  behind  the  scenes  she's  a  vixen ;  not  beauty, 
for  she  requires  dress  to  be  even  pretty."  (Howe  forgot 
the  rose-leaf  youth  she  brought  him,  and  the  charming 
smile — the  latter  the  greatest  of  all  beauties!)  "Years 
ago  I  saw  it  all,  I  felt  it  all.  I  knew  I'd  got  nothing 
in  return  for  everything.  Yet  I  kept  a  cheerful  face  and 
forgave  all,  even  to  the  men  continually  about  her,  because 
she  was  so  cold  and  calculating  that — ha  !  ha  ! — I  thought 
she  must  be,  she  couldn't  but  be,  my  own  !  If  I  had  drawn 
a  blank  in  the  lottery  of  life,  no  one  should  be  the  wiser. 
I  would  be  true  to  it,  and  contented  with  it,  no  matter 
how  I'd  been  sold  on  it.  But  instead  of  a  blank  I  drew 
that  sum  of  all  human  villanies — a  wanton  !  Oh  !  why 
does  God  make  such  cockatrices — such  beasts!  God? 
There  is  no  God  I  ' ' 

"  She  was  her  mother' sown  daughter,"  observed  Philip, 
''  and  what  could  you  expect  ?  " 

"  Yes — Mrs.  Dexter — vile  humbug  and  fraud  and 
cheat !  "  gnashed  David.  **  And  all  the  thousands  I  spent 
on  her,  too,  even  to  saving  her  once  from  an  absurd  dab- 
bling in  Wall  Street !  Ugh  !  those  flatteries  and  crocodile 
tears  1  Blind  blockhead  that  I  was,  trusting  them  both  as 
I  did  myself  !" 

**  I  tried  to  warn  you  against  Mrs.  Dexter  when  you  were 
first  married,"  murmured  Philip. 

*•  I  hope  she's  in  hell,  where  she  belongs  !  "  retorted 
David,  for  the  moment  his  comfortable  Universalist  belief 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  307 

scorching  and  shrivelling  like  tow;  "and  her  daughter 
ought  to  be  sent  there  after  her.     /ought  to  send  her." 

"  Oh,  David,  David,"  cried  his  brother,  "  you're  fear- 
ful !  You're  beside  yourself.  You  don't  know  what  you 
are  saying." 

*'  I  do  !  I  do  !  "  insisted  the  frantic  husband ;  "  it's  you 
who  don't  know,  who  don't  understand.  For  I  say,"  the 
judge  and  master  which  every  man  naturally  is  over  every 
woman  still  raging  within  him,  ''  who  is  to  avenge  such 
wrongs  if  the  sufferers  from  them  do  not  ?  The  law  and 
the  courts  stop  short  before  them  with  that  very  expecta- 
tion. Is  there  no  power,  anywhere,  to  purify  society  ? 
Would  you  not  put  under  ground  a  rotting  body  that  was 
filling  the  air  with  disgust  and  disease  ?  And  is  this  cor- 
rupted soul  to  be  kept  among  its  fellows,  tainting  and 
ruining  everything  it  touches  ?  What  use  under  heaven 
has  this  world  for  an  adulteress  ?  Penitent,  what  place  is 
there  for  her  ?  Impenitent,  what  a  moral  plague-spot ! 
Oh,  if  it  were  not  for  the  cursed  newspapers  that  would 
spread  it  far  and  wide,  and  so  brand  my  children's  lives,  I 
would  out  with  this  damned  spot  !  I  say  Fanny  Dexter 
ought  to  be  wiped  out  of  existence.  She  can  never  be 
made  clean.  In  this  world  God  himself  can't  make  her 
clean." 

"You  a  murderer,  David  Howe?  You  merciless  to  a 
woman  ?  "  returned  Philip,  gently.  "  Thank  God,  you're 
too  much  a  man,  too  much  a  Christian,  too  much  an  Ameri- 
can for  that.  Come,  control  yourself,  my  brother.  Be 
yourself.  Bear  this  thing  man-fashion.  We're  not 
in  the  dark  ages,  when  a  husband  could  drop  his  wife 
down  an  oubliette  if  she  were  unfaithful  to  him,  and  no  one 
be  the  wiser.  Women  don't  belong  to  their  husbands  now- 
adays, but  to  themselves,   and  what  they  do   is  between 


3o8  NEIV    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

themselves  and  a  Higher  Power.  If  it  were  my  wife,  I 
would  shake  her  off  into  the  fire  of  her  own  lusts  as  I  would 
a  scorpion,  and  never  think  of  her  again.  Do  you  the 
same.  Get  a  divorce  from  the  infamous  creature,  and 
begin  life  over  again.  A  divorce  will  be  her  social  death, 
and  to  a  Dexter  that  will  be  a  worse  punishment  than  a  real 
one,  I  fancy." 

Philip  Howe's  wife  was  a  *' good "  woman,  not  an 
enthralling  one  to  him  as  Fanny  had  ever  been  to  David, 
or  perhaps  he  would  not  have  imagined  it  quite  such  a 
simple  thing  to  '*  shake  her  off  "  in  similar  circumstances. 
All  the  same,  his  cooler  view  had  its  effect  upon  his 
brother,  and  the  glare  began  fading  from  David's  face, 
his  step  to  slacken. 

"  Yes,"  he  assented,  "  position  is  the  very  god  of  very 
god  to  the  Dexter  mind;  "  and  after  a  few  quieter  turns 
about  the  room  he  continued,  bitterly,  "  and  when  she  has 
lost  the  position  I  gave  her,  little  as  it  filled  her  ambition, 
and  when  even  my  little  world  has  turned  its  back  upon  her, 
she'll— she'll— Phil— she'll— ha  I  ha!  ha!  ha!"  And 
David  went  off  into  hysterical  laughter,  which  presently 
burst  into  rending  sobs — sobs  drowned  in  those  tears 
that  flow  not  to  relieve  but  to  devastate;  that  ''  flow  but 
once  a  life,"  and  that  leave  no  possibility  of  future  tears 
behind. 

**  Don't  cry,  David;  dear,  dear  David,"  implored  his 
brother  in  a  broken  voice,  his  own  eyes  brimming  over. 
**  For  God's  sake,  don't  cry.    She  is  not  worth  your  tears." 

"Oh,"  murmured  the  unhappy  man,  *Mf  I  had  been 
spared  only  that !  " 

"  Spared  what  ?  "  asked  Philip. 

But  David  only  shook  his  head,  and  sobbed  and  sobbed 
in  utter  uncontrol  until  the  first  storm  of  his  despair  was 


'  A^EW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  309 

spent.  Then  he  again  began  walking  up  and  down  the 
room,  drying  his  eyes  and  recovering  himself,  until,  when 
he  could  steady  his  words,  he  said,  simply : 

*'  Too  bad,  Phil,  to  put  you  through  this.  I'm  ashamed 
of  myself.  I  have  been  beside  myself.  But  I've  done 
now,  for  good  and  all.  Please  get  Pierson  round  here  so 
I  can  arrange  about  an  immediate  divorce,  and  then  come 
back  and  help  me  think  how  to  get  Grace  and  Harold  over 
to  your  kind  Lucy  this  afternoon,  if  possible.  Thank 
heaven,  Edward  has  just  gone  back  to  school  !  " 

Was  it  the  thought  of  his  children  which  had  sent  that 
scalding  flood  so  agonizingly  forth  ?  Nay,  the  smiling, 
perfumed  kiss  which  had  dismissed  him  that  morning  to 
his  business ;  the  sweet  softness,  the  appealing  tenderness 
of  the  last  bright  weeks  \  the  fond  docility,  the  uplooking, 
adoring  wifehood  for  which  all  men  sigh,  but  of  which 
he  had  only  dreamed.  From  the  one  woman  from  whom 
David  had  ever  wanted  these  they  had  come,  and,  to  his 
simple  apprehension,  so  perfectly,  that  he  had  had  nothing 
to  add  to  that  more  than  bridegroom  bliss ;  and,  O  God 
of  Heaven,  it  was  all,  all  but  the  cajoling  of  the  finished 
courtesan  against  the  swift-coming  day  of  her  exposure  ! 

It  is  ever  so.  Human  ruthlessness  is  never  content  to 
stab,  merely,  the, generous  heart.  The  knife  is  always 
turned  in  the  wound,  and  every  pang  of  excruciation,  every 
detail  of  ignominy  is  calmly  meted  out.  To  the  reserved 
and  sensitive  and  romantic  Howe,  that  month  of  Judas- 
cheat  to  which  he  had  abandoned  himself  was  the  intoler- 
able climax  of  all  the  hideous  wrongs  which  had  gone 
before. 


CHAPTER   XXXVI. 

SENTENCED. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  of  the  same  day,  and  in  a  mood 
cold  and  calm  as  the  death  within  his  heart,  David  Howe 
was  awaiting  the  return  of  his  wife  from  a  theatre  matinee. 
As  far  as  he  was  concerned,  life  was  over.  All  he  had  lived 
for,  everything  most  sacred  to  him,  had  vanished  in  agony 
and  shame.  In  future,  existence  would  be  not  only  a  blank 
but  a  brand.  There  remained  but  to  pass  judgment  on  the 
guilty  author  of  such  measureless  crime  and  woe. 

Knowing  Fanny's  habits,  and  in  order  to  make  it  possible 
for  his  brother  to  remove  his  two  younger  children  without 
the  scene  their  mother  was  certain  to  make,  immediately 
on  leaving  David,  Philip  Howe  had  sent  her  a  telegram 
signed  **  H.  H.,"  and  reading,  *'  Matinee  ticket  for  you, 
box  office,  Wallack's.  Will  meet  you."  Philip  had 
further  set  a  watch  on  the  house,  so  that  if  the  children 
should  leave  it  before  Fanny  did,  they  could  be  followed 
and  brought  back  by  a  message  from  their  father.  Fanny 
being  well  out  of  the  way  for  two  or  three  hours,  he  and 
David  would  have  time  to  put  some  of  their  things  together, 
and  get  them  started  with  himself  for  Brooklyn  before  her 
return. 

Philip's  plot  succeeded  perfectly.  All  unwittingly  the 
reckless  betrayer  was  herself  betrayed,  and  while  she  was 
sitting  in  a  very  bad  humor  at  having  an  empty  seat  beside 
her  throughout  a  long  play,  instead  of  the  "  H,   H."  she 


.  A'EW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  31 1 

had  expected,  her  home  and  her  family  vanished  from  her 
forever. 

*'  Well,  my  own  dear  !  "  she  cried  blithely,  as  she  entered 
their  rooms,  and  her  husband  turned  toward  her  from  the 
window  at  which  he  had  been  standing,  "  so  you're  home 
until  Monday  !  How  nice  !  But  how  pale  and  tired  you 
look,  poor  little  popsy  !  Let  me  get  my  things  off  and  I'll 
make  you  a  good  stiff  egg-nog  to  revive  you  for  dinner. 
S'pose  you  skipped  your  lunch,  as  usual,  bad  boy  !  Have 
you  seen  the  children  ?  They  ought  to  be  back  from  the 
Park  by  this  time.  Harriet  Foster  sent  me  word  to  meet 
her  at  Wallack's  this  afternoon,  so  I  gave  them  leave  to 
go  and  see  their  beloved  animals — feed  the  monkeys  and 
the  elephant.  Harriet  wasn't  there,  after  all,  and  the  play 
was  stupid,  and  I  was  bored,  and  sorry  I  hadn't  stayed  at 
home,  darning  my  Davy's  stockings  !  "  And  as  she  ran  on 
she  removed  her  walking  things,  and  was  flitting  about, 
putting  them  away. 

*' Fanny,"  returned  David,  and  his  strange  and  stem 
tone  made  his  wife  stop  and  look  earnestly  at  him, 
"  Philip  says  I  must  divorce  you,  and  I  think  the  same 
myself.  So  I  intend  to  do  so  at  once.  The  papers  will 
be  served  on  you  Monday." 

''Philip? — divorce  me?"  echoed  Fanny,  blanching 
like  death.  '*  What  on  earth  do  you  mean  ?  Have  you 
been  listening  to  lies  about  me  from  people  that  hate  me  ? 
Your  brother  and  that  prim  wife  of  his  have  always  hated 
me,  and  Jeannette  too.  I  always  knew  it.  I  suppose 
Jeannette  has  been  filling  them  with  Belmont  lies.  She 
got  her  cue  from  Belmont  years  ago.  Belmont  was  always 
envious  and  jealous  of  us  Dexters,  and  couldn't  say  too 
much  against  us.  The  idea  of  your  believing  her  !  I  told 
you  a  month  ago  I  thought  she  was  going  crazy.     Wait  till 


312  A'EJV    YORK:   A    SYMPHOiYIC   STUDY. 

V 

yoii  see  for  yourself  how  changed  she  is.  She's  not 
responsible." 

'*  Not  a  word  against  Jeannette,  F'anny,  if  you  know 
what's  good  for  yourself.  There's  no  lie  nor  craziness 
about  it  at  all.  You  were  turned  out  of  the  Austen  House 
and  refused  rooms  at  Belmont  Springs.  That  is  enough, 
even  if " 

*'  Lies,  I  say  !  Damned,  devilish  lies  !  "  cried  Fanny, 
the  inward  coarseness  of  the  true  demi-mondaine  coming 
out  in  her  excitement.  "'  I  wouldn't  take  the  rooms  the 
landlord  offered  me  at  Belmont  Springs,  and  in  revenge  he 
is  telling  lies  about  me." 

"  Of  course  you  deny  it.  Tying  is  your  native  element. 
But  that  can't  alter  the  facts  nor  my  determination.  We 
must  part,  and  by  law,  too.  As  quick  as  the  law  can  do 
it,  I  divorce  you." 

*'  The  law  can't  do  it,"  retorted  Fanny,  at  once  viciously 
and  triumphantly.  '*  You  can't  get  a  divorce  from  Fanny 
Howe  in  this  State.  I  defy  you  to  try.  You've  got  to 
prove  an  act,  and  you  can't  prove  it.  It  isn't  there  to 
prove."  Then,  changing  to  a  solemn  air  and  an  impressive 
tone,  "  I  may  have  been  imprudent,  but  I've  never  been 
untrue  to  you,  David  Howe.  As  God  is  my  judge,  I  never 
have." 

"  So  you  think  you've  got  me  for  life,  do  you  ?  "  returned 
the  husband  ;  "  that  I  can't  divorce  you,  and  that  you  can 
go  on  dragging  my  name  and  honor  in  the  gutter  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter,  while  I  foot  some  of  the  bills,  eh  ? 
But  you  little  guess  whom  you're  dealing  with.  Knowing 
my  blind,  and,  as  I  now  see  it,  criminal,  confidence  in  you, 
my  brother  Philip  didn't  take  Jeannette' s  word  for  it,  and 
gave  me  no  hint  of  your  infamy  until  he  had  your  record 
down  in  black  and  white.     He  sent  one  detective  to  Bel- 


Ar£JV    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  313 

mont,  and  has  had  you  shadowed  here  by  another  ever  since 
you  got  home.  With  a  fraction  of  the  damning  evidence 
any  court  would  make  me  a  free  man  in  ten  minutes." 

**  David  !  "  shrieked  Fanny,  as  she  realized  that  she  was 
in  the  toils,  ''  you  can't  be  serious  !  You  can't  mean  to 
divorce  me  !  What,  send  me  away  from  you  and  from  my 
children  ?  " 

**  Much  you  care  for  me  and  for  your  children  !  Don't 
call  them  yours.  You're  not  fit  to  take  their  innocent 
names  on  your  lips.  They  are  yours  no  longer.  I  never 
thought  to  thank  heaven  that  half  my  children  are  dead, 
but  I  do.     I  only  wish  the  rest  were,  and  I  with  them." 

*'  But  I  will  not  leave  my  children  !  "  shrilled  Fanny; 
'*  I  cannot  live  without  Gracie !  I  won't,  I  won't,  I 
won't !  " 

Laconically,  "  You'll  have  to.  Philip  decoyed  you  to 
the  theatre  by  a  telegram  this  afternoon,  and  while  you 
were  gone  they  were  taken  to  Brooklyn." 

Fanny  uttered  a  piercing  scream,  threw  herself  on  the 
floor,  and  dashed  her  head  against  it. 

"  Keep  quiet,  woman,"  said  Howe,  sternly;  "  do  you 
want  to  bring  the  house  in  here  to  witness  your  disgrace  ? 
I  hear  Clara  Calvert's  name  is  coupled  with  yours  all  over 
Belmont,  and  do  you  think  I'll  let  Grace  be  contaminated 
too  ?  Calvert's  been  a  fool  to  trust  you  with  Clara  as  he 
has." 

*' Oh,  Davy,  Davy,  have  pity!"  cried  Fanny,  rushing 
madly  to  him  on  her  knees  and  clasping  his.  He  tried  to 
disengage  himself,  but  she  clung  tightly,  and  dragged  her- 
self round  the  floor  after  him.  ''  David,  forgive  me  ! 
Oh,  for  God's  sake,  forgive  me  !  And  Clara's  never  done 
anything  wrong.  I  swear  she  hasn't.  Do  you  think  I'd 
lead  away  my  dead  sister's  child — ^Julia's  child  ?     I  was 


314  A'EIV    YORK:   A    SYi^ PHONIC   STUDY. 

always  good  while  Julia  lived.  She  was  more  to  me  than 
any  one  on  earth.  And  I'll  be  good  again  if  you'll  only 
try  me,  Davy.  I  know  I'm  not  worthy.  I  know  I'm  the 
scum  of  humanity,  that  I'm  not  fit  to  kiss  your  shoe. 
But  I  will  kiss  it — I  do  kiss  it !  "  trying  to  abase  her  lips 
to  his  feet.  **  PI)  worship  you  !  I  do  worship  you  !  I'll 
be  the  most  perfect  slave  man  ever  had  if  you'll  forgive 
me  and  not  drive  me  away — not  take  away  my  home  and 
my  children,  and  send  me  out  into  the  great  wide  world 
— not  disgrace  me,  David  !  You  ought  to  make  some  allow- 
ance. You  know  you  bought  that  mine,  and  you  had  to 
sell  the  Harlem  property  to  pay  for  it ;  and  you  never  asked 
me,  but  just  brought  a  lawyer  and  a  deed  of  sale  for  me  to 
sign ;  and  I  never  knew  till  afterward  that  as  your  wife  I 
had  a  right  to  refuse  to  sign  it  if  I  chose  ;  and  the  mine 
didn't  pay  as  the  houses  did,  and  so  we  lost  our  house 
in  New  York.  It  wasn't  my  fault,  but  yours,  and  it 
changed  all  my  life.  When  we  were  married  I  never 
thought  of  such  a  thing  as  hoarding  in  Brooklyn  !  You 
ought  to  consider  how  hard  it  was  on  me,  and  how  I  suffered 
over  it,  cooped  up  in  three  rooms.  Oh,  do,  for  God's 
sake,  David,  try  me  once  more,  somewhere  in  our  own 
little  home  !  Didn't  I  make  you  happy  this  last  month  ? 
You  know  I  did.  And  I  was  so  happy  !  I  never  loved, 
I  never  worshipped  any  one  so  before.  God  !  God  !  make 
him  have  pity  !  " 

Her  hair  had  loosened  about  her  shoulders;  her  eyes 
were  upturned  ;  her  face  was  terror-stricken ;  she  looked 
the  pleading  Magdalen  she  was. 

But  Howe  gazed  down  unmoved.  ''  You  act  splendidly, 
Fanny,"  he  said,  his  thin  nostrils  growing  thinner  with 
contempt  and  aversion,  "  and  I  admit  that  for  the  last 
month  you've  acted  for  all  you  were  worth.     You'd  have 


iVElV    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  3^5 

made  a  fortune  on  the  stage,  but  for  real  life  it  doesn't  fill 
the  bill.  As  for  disgracing  you — for  the  children's  sakes 
I  will  do  all  quietly  ;  nor  will  I  leave  you  penniless,  as 
you  deserve ;  not  leave  you  a  beggar  in  purse  as  you  have 
me  in  heart.  For  the  rest,  I  utterly  wash  my  hands  of  you. 
I  must,  of  course,  give  a  week's  notice  for  these  rooms, 
until  when  you  can  occupy  them.     After  that " 

''  Since  you  are  determined  to  disgrace  me,  kill  me! 
Kill  me  at  once  and  done  with  it.  Better  that  than  to 
turn  me  out !  "  she  cried. 

*' True,  it  would  be  better.  You  really  ought  to  be 
killed,  P'anny.  I  said  so  to  Philip  this  morning.  But 
I  don't  purpose  to  turn  executioner  because  you  are  an 
adulteress,  and  worse.  Why  God  Himself  doesn't  strike 
such  as  you  with  lightning  and  put  you  out  of  a  world  you 
help  to  ruin,  I  don't  understand.  But  let  Him  see  to  it. 
Live  to  repent — to  be  yet  a  good  woman,  Fanny." 

''  I'll  never  live  to  be  disgraced  !  "  shrieked  Fanny. 
''  I'll  kill  myself!" 

*'  Oh,  no,  Fanny  !  You  would  not  dare,  wicked  as  you 
are,  to  go  before  your  Maker.  The  only  thing  for  you  to 
do  is  to  hide  yourself  in  some  farm-house  and  try  to  be  a 
comfort  to  some  farmer's  hard-working  wife." 

''  Josie  !  Josie  !  "  screamed  Fanny.  '*  Where  is  Joseph- 
ine ?  Get  Josephine  !  Take  me  to  Josephine  !  Where  is 
my  sister  ?  Get  me  my  sister  !  I  must  have  my  sister  ! 
I  can't  be  left  alone  !  I  can't  act !  I  can't  think  !  I 
shall  go  mad  !     I  shall— I  shall  !  " 

"I  sent  a  note  to  Josephine  just  before  you  came  in," 
said  David,  as  he  took  up  his  hat  to  go,  "  and  when  she 
gets  it  I  presume  she  will  come  to  you.  Meantime,"  with 
his  hand  on  the  door-knob,  *'  shouting  won't  bring  her  any 
quicker,  Frances   Dexter,  but  it  may  make  your  landlady 


3i6  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

treat  you  as  the  Belmont  landlords  did ;  "  and  with  that 
David  was  gone. 

"  I  '  ought  to  be  killed/  ought  I  ?  "  cried  Fanny,  as  with 
blazing  eyes  she  stood  staring  at  the  door  whence  her  hus- 
band had  departed ;  then  she  spranj^  toward  her  closet,  and 
seizing  a  bottle  of  laudanum  that  stood  there,  she  drank 
off  its  contents. 

An  hour  later  David  had  reached  his  brother's  house  in 
Brooklyn.  i\fter  dinner  he  was  closeted  with  Philip  for  a 
little  time,  and  then  he  sought  his  anxious  and  trembling 
sister. 

*'  Where  are  you  going  ?  "  she  cried,  her  face  one  terri- 
fied interrogation ;  for  his  hat  was  on  his  head,  his  over- 
coat on  his  arm,  and  he  held  a  travelling-bag  in  his  hand. 

**  I'm  going  to  the  seashore  for  a  few  days.  I  must  get 
away  from  all  this.  And,  Jeannette,  please  don't  take  it 
hard  if  I  decide  to  send  the  children  to  boarding-school 
for  the  present  and  pay  your  board  here  with  Phil  and 
Lucy,  or  wherever  you  may  prefer.  I  can't  be  a  family 
man  this  winter.  Perhaps  I  may  never  be  again.  How 
would  you  like  a  season  in  Washington  ?  A  thorough 
change  would  be  as  good  for  you  as  for  me.  But  these  are 
only  suggestions.  I'll  be  back  soon  and  talk  things  over 
at  length.  Meanwhile  you  can  be  inquiring  about  a  good 
New  England  school  for  Grace.  Harold,  I  suppose,  had 
better  go  to  Edward's.  Take  care  of  yourself,  my  own  true 
sister,"  kissing  her  on  the  brow,  "■  and  God  bless  you  for 
all  your  love  to  me  and  mine." 

As  David  closed  her  door,  poor  Jeannette  sank  upon  a 
chair  and  pressed  her  hands  to  her  heart  and  then  to  her 
brow.  Her  release  from  the  long  bondage  that  had  eaten 
into  her  soul  had  come,  but  was  it  only  because  the  earth 
had  opened  beneath  her  feet  ?     Fanny's  taunt,  that  in  her 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  317 

downfall  Jeannette  would  win  the  chance  to  preside  over 
her  brother's  family  had  found  a  timid  echo  in  her  heart. 
In  its  inner  shrine  had  been  the  voiceless  vision  of  a  quiet 
home  in  some  New  York  suburb  with  David  and  the  children 
until  the  latter  grew  up.  Now,  instead  of  this,  as  it  had 
seemed  to  her,  sweet  natural  consummation,  these  precious 
ones  were  to  be  confided  to  strangers,  though  they  were 
dearer  to  her  than  life,  and  she  herself  was  to  "  board 
wherever  she  might  prefer,"  but  not  with  this  adored 
brother ;  that  was  very  evident.  Ah,  how  could  this  shy 
and  passive  soul,  at  this  stage  of  the  game  of  life,  make 
for  itself  out  of  the  great  cold  world  a  new  warm  environ- 
ment of  love  ?  Youth  was  utterly  gone,  and  without  youth 
what  woman  has  hope  ?  Jeannette  Howe  was  but  the  shell  of 
her  former  self.  All  that  she  had  been,  all  that  she  might 
have  been,  had  been  used  up  by  her  brother's  wicked  wife. 

And  thus  do  the  strong  and  the  selfish  batten  and  thrive 
on  the  loving  and  the  weak,  and  drain  their  very  lives 
out  of  them,  from  generation  to  generation. 

The  good  David,  all  unconscious  of  having,  man-fashion, 
swept  down  his  sister's  little  trembling  cobweb  of  hope, 
sped  on  his  midnight  train  toward  a  seashore  upon  whose 
sands  for  a  few  days  he  walked  or  sat  alone  with  '*Gcean, 
the  only  handmaid  of  eternity,"  until  by  that  mighty 
companionship  he  was  in  some  measure  restored  and  able 
to  face  calmly  his  altered  fate. 

Meantime,  it  had  been  after  dinner  before  Josephine 
Baldwin  got  to  Fanny's  rooms  in  response  to  David's  note 
outlining  the  situation.  Not  one  minute,  however,  when 
reached,  did  she  remain  in  them.  '  Flying  down  stairs  to 
the  landlady,  she  gasped,  **  A  doctor,  quick  !  My  sister's 
asleep  on  the  floor,  all  alone,  and  I  can't  rouse  her.  Go  in 
a  carriage — anything — only  be  quick,  for  God's  sake  !  " 


3i8  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

V 

A  doctor  came,  and  assistants  with  him,  and  together 
they  spent  long  hours  in  putting  the  would-be  suicide 
through  the  merciless  ordeal  of  an  opium  rescue.  At 
last  the  death-sleep  was  conquered,  and  bruised,  aching, 
and  agonizingly  exhausted,  the  reckless  one  found  herself 
still  in  the,  to  her,  now  terrible  land  of  the  living. 


CHAPTER    XXXVII. 

AN    ADVENTURESS. 

Brought  back  to  life  against  her  will,  Fanny  Howe 
accepted  its  changed  conditions  with  all  her  native  energy, 
stoicism,  and  pluck.  She  had  always  dwelt  intensely  in 
the  present,  never  thinking  about  the  past  and  very  little 
about  the  future,  and  this  temperament  now  came  bravely 
to  her  aid,  and  armed  her  cap-a-pie  for  the  struggle  which 
was  henceforth  to  be  hers  in  the  frowning  world  whose 
deepest  laws  she  had  defied.  After  some  days  of  utter 
prostration  and  misery,  she  suddenly  felt  briskly  herself 
again,  and,  meantime,  as  Josephine  sat  by  her  bedside,  she 
had  ample  opportunity,  amid  the  solemnity  and  also  the 
pathetic  weakness  of  her  hairbreadth  rescue  from  the  grave, 
to  impress  upon  her  sister  her  own  version  of  her  story. 

She  protested  that  her  husband's  simply  insane  jealousy 
had  finally  driven  her  to  desperation.  For  years  quietly 
poisoned  against  her  by  Jeannette,  he  had  latterly  made 
demands  that  no  self-respecting  woman  could  or  would 
accept.  He  had  insisted  that  she  should  have  no  callers 
nor  correspondents  of  the  other  sex  whatever.  On  her 
refusal  to  accede  to  conditions  which  would  have  been  to 
admit  herself  guilty  of  his  vile  accusations,  he  had  de- 
clared her  unworthy  of  her  children,  and  had  taken  them 
away  preparatory  to  getting  a  divorce.  Without  her  chil- 
dren she  could  not  live.  She  had  tried  to  die,  and  why, 
oh,  why,  had  they  brought  her  back?     But  since  they  had, 


320        NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

never  would  she  return  to  k  man  who  was  a  Turk  and  who 
wanted  a  slave  for  a  wife.  If  he  chose  to  divorce  her, 
well,  the  whole  West  was  open  to  him  to  get  a  divorce  in. 
She  shouldn't  hinder  him,  even  if  he  didn't  give  her  a 
cci:^.  She  ^ould  keep  boarders,  she  supposed,  if  he  could' 
stand  by  and  see  it.  He  might  do  as  he  liked.  Men 
made  the  laws  to  suit  themselves.  Women  were  at  their 
mercy.  Every  woman  knew  that.  But  he'd  better  not 
touch  her  good  name.  If  he  did,  she'd  fight.  He 
couldn't  prove  anything,  not  a  single,  solitary  thing.  She 
had  been  gay  and  flirtatious  and  free — yes,  imprudent  even. 
She  would  not  deny  it,  and  she  admitted  it  was  a  mistake. 
Married  women  ought  to  respect  prejudices  and  be  careful 
about  appearances.  If  she  had  her  life  to  live  over  again, 
she  would  do  differently;  or,  rather,  she  wouldn't  marry  at 
all.  She  would  go  on  the  stage,  which  is  what  she  should 
have  done  in  the  first  place.  She  would  have  made  a  for- 
tune, and  no  thanks  to  any  man.  But  she  had  myt  gone 
wi'ong  ! 

How  much  Josephine  and  her  husband  believed  of  all 
this,  Fanny  couldn't  guess.  The  Baldwins  themselves  were 
little  more  than  Bohemians.  Crossing  the  water  twice  a 
year  as  they  did,  they  were  birds  of  passage  who  had  no 
foothold  in  New  York  in  any  fixed  circle  whatever. 
Whether  they  came  or  went,  nobody  cared.  And  like  most 
people  who  live  equally  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic, 
they  had  lost  all  love  of  and  hold  on  Americanism,  whether 
of  patriotism  or  principles.  They  were  never  shocked. 
Baldwin  said  that  if  people  were  i)leasant  and  minded  their 
own  business,  they  might  do  as  they  liked,  for  all  him. 
Josephine  had  almost  no  callers  among  her  own  sex,  but 
she  saw  a  great  deal  of  the  free  and  easy  New  York  busi- 
ness men  who  were  her  husband's  associates — polite,  well- 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  321 

dressed,  well-mannered  jobbers,  brokers,  schemers  and 
semi -sports,  who  with  equal  equanimity  spread  all  sail  on 
the  surface  one  day  and  struggled  beneath  it  the  next. 

Moreover,  the  loyalty  of  the  Dexters  toward  each  other 
had  been  one  of  their  marked  family  characteristics.  To 
the  outside  world  their  little  circle  of  five — father,  mother, 
and  three  daughters — had  ever  presented  a  solid  front  of 
mutual  sympathy  and  admiration.  These  now  had  all 
been  taken  from  Josephine  but  Fanny,  and  she  herself  was 
childless.  In  this  wide  world  she  had  few  relations, 
very  few  friends.  She  was  quite  unprepared  to  throw  over- 
board her  only  sister  while  it  was  possible  to  countenance 
her.  To  her  lazy  little  brain,  wrapped  from  its  birth  in 
cotton-wool,  it  was  easier  to  let  the  able  Fanny  manage 
her  own  affairs  in  her  own  way  than  to  try  to  fathom  the 
realities  of  the  situation.  She,  therefore,  seemingly  ac- 
quiesced in  Fanny's  own  view  of  herself,  spared  her  both 
reproaches  and  advice,  and  made  no  objection  when  the 
audacious  woman  proposed  to  take  rooms  in  the  expensive 
new  apartment  hotel  on  Fifth  Avenue  where  she  herself 
and  her  husband  were  spending  their  present  three  months 
between  trips. 

Fanny  ensconced  herself  in  the  cheapest  corner  in  the 
Surrey,  and  at  first  sat  at  Josephine's  table,  where  there 
was  but  one  vacant  place.  Meals  in  the  Surrey  were  ci  la 
carte.  The  Baldwins  ordered  and  paid  for  their  own,  and 
Fanny  found  she  had  to  do  the  same  for  hers,  as  the  hus- 
band privately  insisted  the  wife  should  make  no  offer  to 
pay  for  her.  For  though  Baldwin  had  consented  to  bridge 
over  the  proprieties  for  his  way\vard  sister-in-law,  he  was 
perfectly  willing  that  she  should  be  compelled  to  show  her 
hand.  She  was  not  long  in  doing  so.  A  week  or  two 
after  her  arrival  at  the  Surrey,  the  two  young  men  who  had 


0--  jvi:,yy     YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

been  the  cause  of  the  scandal  at  Belmont  also  took  rooms 
there.  Fanny  proposed  that  the  Baldwins  should  move  to 
a  larger  table  where  they  could  all  sit  together.  Mr.  Bald- 
win absolutely  and  firmly  refused. 

**  But  what  am  I  to  do?"  queried  Fanny.  ''Hardy 
and  Gibson  have  come  here  principally  to  be  at  the  table 
with  ladies  whom  they  know.  They  thought  it  would  be 
so  much  more  home-like  than  at  the  restaurant  they've 
been  going  to.  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  how  to  disappoint 
them.  Don't  you  really  believe  Jim  will  change  his 
mind?" 

*'  I  know  positively  he  won't.  He  likes  our  table 
because  it's  by  the  window,  and  the  only  vacant  table  that 
is  large  enough  for  five  or  six  is  in  the  darkest  part  of  the 
room." 

*'  Well,  I  never  !  "  exclaimed  Fanny,  as  if  in  innocent 
astonishment  at  such  selfishness.  *'  The  idea  !  To  break 
up  the  pleasure  of  four  other  people  for  his  own — for,  of 
course,  it  would  be  pleasant  for  you  to  have  the  dear  boys 
at  the  table  as  well  as  for  me.  Such  nice  fellows — perfect 
gentlemen  !  " 

**  La,  no.  Fan,"  returned  Josephine,  virtuously;  *' I 
don't  care  for  your  '  dear  boys  '  one  way  or  the  other.  My 
husband  is  enough  for  me.  Pity  yours  hadn't  been  enough 
for  you  !  Besides,  travelling  all  the  time  as  we  do,  to  keep 
to  ourselves  is  the  only  home  we  have." 

''All  right,"  said  her  sister,  cheerfully;  "but  as  my 
friends  came  here  to  join  our  party,  and  Jim  won't 
'jine',"  laughing,  "I'll  have  to  desert  your  table  for 
theirs." 

''Fanny."'  exclaimed  Mrs.  Josephine,  "and  let  peo- 
ple talk,  as  of  course  they  will?  You  know  you  said  your- 
self you'd  been  too  reckless  of  appearances." 


XEl^V    YORK:    A    SYMPHOXIC   SI  I'D  Y.  323 

**  But  the  people  here  are  all  strangers  to  me,"  persisted 
Fanny,  "and  to  you,  too,  aren't  they?  You  don't  know 
any  one  in  the  Surrey,  so  why  should  they  talk?  And,  any 
way,  it  won't  be  for  long,  for,  of  course,  I  shan't  stay  here 
after  you  sail.  You  must  admit,  yourself,  that  with  my 
beggarly  allowance  from  David  Howe,  it's  rather  absurd 
my  paying  for  soup  and  a  chop  and  potato  at  your  table,  at 
these  awful  Surrey  prices,  when  at  Hardy  and  Gibson's 
I  can  get  six  or  eight  courses  with  wine  and  champagne 
for  nothing." 

*'  But  how  can  you  let  young  men  who  are  no  relation 
to  you — whom  you  didn't  even  know  six  months  ago — pay 
your  board,  Fanny  ?    For  that's  just  what  it  amounts  to." 

**  They  wouldn't  pay  one  cent  for  me.  You  know,  your- 
self, the  portions  for  one  here  are  large  enough  for  two. 
Jim  only  orders  '  for  one  '  for  both  of  you,  and  their 
two  portions  are  more  than  enough  for  three,  and  why 
shouldn't  I  help  to  drink  up  wine  that  would  only  be 
finished  by  the  waiters?  " 

**  I  suppose  you'll  do  as  you  choose,"  said  Josephine, 
reddening;  **  you  always  have;  and  I  should  think  you'd 
realize  by  this  time  where  it  has  brought  you.  If  you 
expect  to  get  support  or  alimony  out  of  David  Howe,  this 
is  a  queer  way  to  begin ;  "  and  she  added  to  herself,  *'  it's 
her  infatuation  for  that  curly  pate,  Herbert  Hardy.  She'd 
walk  on  her  head  if  he  asked  her  to,  a  boy  of  twenty-two, 
and  she  forty  !  " 

Fanny  did  do  as  she  chose,  and  evening  after  evening, 
conspicuously  and  beautifully  dressed,  she  sailed  into  the 
dining-room  with  the  two  youths,  and,  going  to  a  table  far 
removed  from  the  Baldwins,  gayly  discussed  and  helped 
decide  the  menu  and  the  wines,  lingered  long  with  her 
friends  over  the  repast,  and,  after  leaving  the  apartment, 


324         NEW    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

perhaps  strolled  through  the  ^hotel  parlors,  still  in  their 
society. 

Even  the  passive  Josephine  was  confounded  and  shocked 
at  such  utter  obtuseness,  to  say  the  least,  while  Baldwin 
was  simply  scandalized.  ''  After  our  consenting  she  should 
come  here  under  our  wing  !  "  he  exclaimed.  **  Outra- 
geous !  Disgusting!  Thank  heaven,  we  don't  know  any 
one!" 

But  though  the  Baldwins  and  Fanny  had  no  acquaint- 
ance at  the  Surrey,  the  experienced  eye  of  the  Surrey  pro- 
prietor had  been  fixed  upon  the  latter  very  soon  after  her 
advent,  and  when  he  discovered  that  besides  her  camaraderie 
with  the  aforementioned  opulent  youths,  an  old  gentleman 
was  a  frequent  caller  at  her  room,  and  that  orders  "for 
four ' '  often  floated  down  to  the  hotel  bar  from  late  poker 
parties  in  her  number,  he  laid  the  case  before  Baldwin  for 
instant  action.  The  latter  would  not  trust  his  wife  to  deal 
with  it.  He  went  straight  himself  to  Fanny  and  told  her 
indignantly  that  if  she  didn't  leave  the  Surrey  at  once, 
they  certainly  would;  and,  as  it  was,  he  wasn't  sure  he 
should  ever  let  his  wife  speak  to  her  again. 

**  Jim  !  "  cried  Fanny,  springing  forward  and  clutching 
his  arm,  **  don't  turn  Josephine  against  me  !  Don't,  for 
mercy's  sake  !  If  you  do,  I'll  jump  into  the  East  River  ! 
I  will,  and  no  mistake  about  dying  this  time !  You 
wouldn't  be  my  death,  would  you?  " 

**  What  in  thunder  are  you  so  imprudent  for,  then, 
woman  !  "  cried  Baldwin  ;  ''  so  shameless  !  Can't  you  real- 
ize, yourself,  that  you're  not  respectable — that  you  violate 
all  decency?  If  you  won't  even  keep  up  appearances,  of 
course  Josephine  and  I  can't  stand  by  you.  Nobody  can 
stand  by  you  !     Why  won't  you  look  things  in  the  face?  " 

*'  I'm  sure  I  don't  know,"  murmured  Fanny,  sinking  in 


i 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  325 

a  heap  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and  hiding  her  face  in 
her  hands;  *'  I  believe  I'm  crazy." 

**  I  believe  you  are!"  said  Baldwin,  turning  on  his 
heel. 

For  some  time  after  he  left  her,  Fanny  remained  crouched 
together  in  a  bottomless  daze  of  misery.  "  Can't  \ou  real- 
ize, yourself,  that  you're  not  respectable  ?  "  This  awful  truth 
echoed  and  reechoed,  reverberated,  thundered  through  every 
remotest  corner  of  her  heart.  This  was  the  third  rebuff 
from  a  hotel-keeper.  David  Howe,  all  the  Howes,  had 
rejected  her.  The  Baldwins  were  on  the  point  of  doing 
so.  Was  she  indeed  an  outcast — really  and  truly  cast  out 
from  her  own  sex  ? 

A  great  wave  from  the  lerrLn  occcin  of  Retribution  that 
welters  round  all  our  lives,  had  rolled  in  and  dashed  even 
this  stout  heart  to  the  ground,  (ireat  God  !  What  should 
she  do?     Where  should  she  go? 

A  straighter,  simpler  nature  would  have  acknowledged 
to  itself  what  it  was,  and  would  either  have  repented  and 
reformed,  or  have  sunk  unresistingly  to  its  proper  level. 
But  to  Fanny's  tortuous  soul  neither  alternative  presented 
itself.  The  two  opposing  instincts — her  mother's  passion 
for  position,  her  father's  thirst  for  indulgence,  still  warred 
within  her ;  and  when  at  last  she  rose  and  roused  herself  to 
action,  it  was  again  to  attempt  the  all  but  impossible — to 
keep  within  the  pale  of  respectability,  even  if  but  just 
within,  and  yet  to  enjoy  in  secret  that  good  fellowship 
with  men  of  pleasure  without  which  life  to  her  was  not 
worth  living,  but  which  such  men  extend  only  to  women 
as  lawless  and  as  pagan  as  themselves. 

Fanny's  common-sense,  however,  tried  to  take  to  heart 
her  brother-in-law's  outburst — that  she  must  indeed  be 
more  careful  of  appearances  if  she  wished  to  preserve  the 


326         NEW    YORK :    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


remnant  of  social  recognition  implied  in  the  toleration 
even  of  strangers.  She  found  herself  rooms  in  one  of  the 
large  New  York  boarding  houses  which  are  formed  out 
of  several  connecting  private  dwellings,  but  each  with  its 
own  front  door  and  latch-key,  and  which,  with  the  major 
part  of  their  patrons  careful  to  avoid  intimacies  with  their 
fellow-boarders,  afford  a  certain  margin  of  unchallenged 
liberty  to  those  whose  inner  life  is  for  good  reasons  their 
own  private  affair.  In  the  second  floor  front  of  one  of 
these  establishments,  and  extremely  convenient,  therefore, 
to  the  entrance  just  beneath,  Mrs.  Fanny  undertook  the 
interesting  role  of  femme  separe'e  who  was  more  sinned 
against  by  a  harsh  and  tyrannical  husband  than  she  herself 
was  sinning. 


CHAPTER   XXXVIIl. 


THE    WORM    AT    THE    ROOT. 


Had  David  Howe's  wife  succeeded  in  her  attempt  upon 
her  life,  it  would  have  been  the  best  thing  that  could  have 
happened  to  her;  but  since  it  was  her  fate  to  live  on, 
equally  was  it  the  best  thing  for  her  that  she  had  tried 
it.  This  self-condemnation  to  death,  and  her  all  but  suc- 
cess in  attaining  it,  invested  the  sinning  one  with  an 
appealing  pathos  and  even  awe  against  which  the  noble 
and  tender  man,  who  could  never  forget  how  he  had  loved 
her,  was  not  proof.  He  pledged  his  brother  and  sisters  to 
silence  upon  his  wrongs,  within  a  month  pro'cured  his 
divorce  privately  before  a  referee,  and  so  well  succeeded  in 
keeping  it  out  of  the  papers,  that  it  was  two  or  three  years 
before  any  one  outside  the  families  concerned  was  aware 
that  it  had  actually  taken  place.  It  was  supposed  to  be 
but  a  separation. 

The  court  gave  Fanny  no  alimony  whatever,  but  David 
continued  the  hundred  dollars  a  month  at  first  begun,  and 
permitted  her  the  privileges  of  corresponding  with  her 
children,  and  of  spending  four  weeks  of  every  summer 
with  them  at  a  seaside  boarding  house  near  his  native  town 
of  Marblehead.  It  is  almost  incredible  that  he  should 
have  allowed  such  a  woman  even  this  margin  of  mother- 
hood, but  Fanny  had  pleaded  with  him  so  desperately  for 
it,  she  had  protested  such  passionate  repentance  and  refor- 
mation, the  children  themselves  were  so  devotedly  attached 


328  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

to  their  "little  momma,"  as  they  fondly  called  her,  and 
their  father  was  so  unwilling  to  lower  their  mother  in  their 
eyes,  that  he  had  not  the  heart  to  refuse  it.  But  in  spite 
of  this  annually  recurring  glimpse  of  her  old  life,  and  of 
her  severe  lesson  at  the  Surrey,  Fanny  found  herself  un- 
able to  avoid  descending  into  a  bohemian. 

At  first  her  fellow-boarders  were  charmed  with  her  win- 
ning manner  and  easy  talk.  The  inexperienced  and  the 
simple  were  impressed  with  the  array  of  well-known  names 
with  which  she  seemed  familiar.  They  invited  her  to  their 
rooms  and  were  seen  in  hers.  But  after  a  time  wives 
became  shy  of  her,  and  husbands  felt  uncomfortable  at  her 
notice.  Her  rich  and  perfumed  dress,  always  in  the 
extreme  of  the  fashion,  the  evening  touch  of  rouge  on  her 
cheek,  her  want  of  women  callers,  the  various  men  who 
after  dinner  appeared  in  the  parlors  to  escort  her  some- 
where, her  unexplained  absences  for  days  at  a  time — grad- 
ually all  this  was  put  together,  inferences  were  insisted 
upon,  and  in  the  end,  notwithstanding  her  prompt  and 
liberal  payment,  the  reluctant  landlady  was  obliged  to 
ask  for  her  rooms  or  lose  important  patrons. 

Poor  Fanny  !  The  first  time  this  ignominy  happened  to 
her,  she  managed  a  trip  to  Paris  to  forget  it.  The  second 
time,  she  went  away  for  a  winter  in  New  Orleans.  The 
third,  it  was  with  bitter  tears  she  packed  her  trunks  and 
acknowledged  that  it  was  no  use;  that  in  New  York,  at 
least,  the  gates  of  the  world  wherein  are  womanhood  and 
home  had  forever  closed  behind  her.  The  educated  and 
refined  of  her  own  sex,  its  wives,  its  mothers,  its  "  ladies'* 
in  their  place,  to  her  must  now  be  thing's  of  the  past. 
Henceforth,  between  the  narrow  walls  of  some  nameless 
flat  must  be  all  the  human  circle  she  could  hope  to 
have,  and  of  that  circle  it  was  certain  there  would  never 


k 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  329 

be  one  whom  she  could  wholly  trust,  or  look  up  to,  or 
respect. 

How  soft  and  fair  and  smiling  seemed  it  now,  how  rav- 
ishing and  sweet,  that  gentle  realm  which  once  she  had 
found  only  stale,  flat  and  unprofitable  1  How  peopled, 
how  warm  and  rich  with  all  human  interests  and  aims, 
compared  with  the  stalking  solitude,  the  hideous  monot- 
ony of  this  under  plane  of  vice  to  which  she  had  fallen  ! 
That  dear  atmosphere  of  love  in  which  she  had  lived, 
husband,  babies,  parents,  sisters,  friends — all  close,  close 
about  her  !  If  she  were  ill,  they  were  so  tender.  If  sad, 
they  were  so  solicitous.  Even  were  she  cross,  they  would 
respect  and  give  way  to  her  mood.  Now,  nothing  but 
these  men,  men,  men — hard — selfish — gross — to  please  and 
to  coax  and  to  flatter  ;  and  if  she  did  not —  Oh,  terror  !  If 
the  time  should  ever  come  when  she  could  not,  what  then? 
And  this  welded  prison  of  despair,  whose  walls  must  soon 
begin  to  contract  upon  her,  was  what  she  had  gained  by 
reaching  wilfully  and  persistently  after  what  she  had  fan- 
cied was  the  free  and  joyous  outer  firmament  in  which 
all  pleasures  were  permitted.  ''Pleasures?"  Oh,  woe, 
woe,  double-weighted,  double-distilled  !  Horrors,  rather, 
revolting,  unspeakable  ! 

In  the  apartment  of  doubtful  location  but  of  modest 
rent  to  which  Fanny's  limited  means  compelled  her  (there 
being  no  modest  rent  in  New  York,  except  in  such  loca- 
tions), there  were  no  amateur  detectives  of  fellow-boarders 
to  wonder  over  her  goings  and  comings,  over  her  un- 
named visitors,  over  her  incessant  notes  and  letters.  But 
housekeeping,  alas,  according  to  Fanny's  standard,  and 
even  in  a  small  flat  with  but  one  servant,  cost  twice  as 
much  as  boarding.  She  wrote  to  David  that  her  health  was 
breaking  down,  that  she  needed  a  more  delicate  cuisine 


330         NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

and  more  personal  care  than  she  could  command  in  a 
boarding  house,  therefore  she  had  been  forced  to  take  a 
flat.  Could  he  increase  her  allowance  by  another  hundred, 
or  even  by  fifty  more  a  month?  She  was  utterly  unworthy 
of  it,  she  knew;  yet  he  always  ha(/httn  so  kind,  so  good 
to  her,  and  she  was  so  grateful,  and  ever  would  be  so 
eternally  grateful  to  him,  etc.,  etc. 

But  now  for  four  years  David  Howe  had  been  a  free 
man.  His  romance  for  his  once  wife  had  entirely  van- 
ished. He  was  not  very  rich,  and  he  was,  in  fact,  very 
tired  of  paying  even  the  twelve  hundred  a  year,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  doctor's  and  other  bills  which  his  Magda- 
len contrived  occasionally  to  get  out  of  him.  Before 
replying,  he  set  a  detective  to  find  out  the  real  meaning  of 
Fanny's  new  departure,  and  when  he  did  write,  it  was  but 
to  ask  :  "  Why  should  I  give  you  more  money  to  be  spent 
in  suppers  with  profligates?  " 

So,  as  Mrs.  Fanny  was  fast  losing  her  youth,  as  the  lines 
and  wrinkles  which  had  been  so  deep  in  her  father's  small 
brown  face  threatened  to  be  the  early  inheritance  of  her 
little  blonde  one,  life  might  have  gone  hard  with  her  but 
for  one  of  those  brilliant  turns  which  for  the  able  and  the 
cool  are  always  among  the  possibilities. 

A  recent  '*  friend  "  was  a  professional  and  flourishing 
city  politician.  At  an  after-theatre  supper  in  a  private 
room  one  night,  Fanny  heard  this  man  and  one  or  two  con- 
federates discussing  a  plundering  contract  scheme  which 
they  were  lobbying  through  at  Albany,  and  swearing  over 
some  doubtful  votes  which  they  feared  they  could  not 
secure,  whereupon  she  had  an  inspiration  and  immediately 
gave  voice  to  it. 

"  Why  can't  /go  to  Albany  and  '  fix  things,'  as  you  call 
it?     Just  let  me  tackle  your  '  hayseeds  '  and  see  whether 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  S7UDY.         331 

they  can  resist  me.  You  know  I  come  from  the  hayseed 
country  myself.  Promise  me  my  expenses  and  the  com- 
mission you'd  give  any  one  else,  and  I'll  get  your  contract 
through  for  you. ' 

No  sooner  proposed  than  accepted  with  enthusiasm. 
The  party  drank  deep  to  the  sluccess  of  the  new  lobbyist, 
so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  it  did  not  break  up  until  her 
friends  had  persuaded  Fanny  to  celebrate  the  occasion  by 
dancing  amid  their  wild  applause  her  Paris  edition  of  the 
Highland  fling  of  her  childhood. 

Behold,  now,  this  thoroughly  depraved  and  unscrupulous 
demi-mondaine  launched  as  a  determined  influencer  of 
law-givers,  as  an  active  factor  in  public  affairs.  Before 
starting  for  Albany,  she  was  carefully  instructed  in  her 
role,  and  so  apt  a  go-between  did  she  prove,  that  after  an 
extremely  entertaining  month  at  the  State  capital,  she 
was  enabled  to  telegraph  the  passage  of  the  desired  bill 
by  the  narrow  majority  for  which  she  had  intrigued  and 
cajoled.  She  returned  triumphant  to  New  York,  and  for 
her  valuable  services  to  the  corruption! sts  relentlessly 
demanded  and  promptly  received  every  dollar  these  ser- 
vices were  worth. 

The  first  taste  of  political  intrigue  and  association  had 
been  supremely  fascinating  to  little  Mrs.  Dexter-Howe,  as 
she  now  called  herself,  its  profits  truly  gratifying.  This 
important  world  of  wheels  within  wheels,  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men,  and  nothing  but  men,  which  compose 
the  legislature  of  a  great  State,  with  its  haggard  ambi- 
tions, its  deadly  jealousies  and  hatreds,  its  envyings  and 
antagonisms,  deep  plots  and  tense  excitements  ;  the  total 
negation  of  conscience  in  so  many  of  its  members;  their 
simple  principles,  so  sympathetically  Fanny's  own,  of 
spending  other  people's  money  as  lavishly,  and  their  own 


33^  NEW    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

time  as  agreeably  and  profitably  as  possible ;  their  abys- 
mal ignorance  of  the  Bible,  of  history,  and  of  letters 
— ah,  on  her  own  plane,  and  after  her  own  heart,  Fanny 
had  indeed  found  at  last  a  topsy-turvy  world  in  which  she 
could  hope  for  even  chances ;  a  purposeless  oCean  across 
which  her  little  bark  needed  only  her  native  skill  and 
coolness  to  be  safely  piloted  at  length  into  the  haven  of 
financial  independence  where  she  would  be. 

No  more  ennui,  no  more  regrets  henceforward  for  this 
energetic  spirit !  From  that  on,  during  the  sessions  of  the 
legislature,  Fanny  was  often  in  Albany.  Several  times 
she  was  at  the  sessions  of  other  legislatures.  Once  she 
was  even  in  Washington.  In  congressional  halls  I  have 
seen  them,  these  specious  and  persistent  harpies,  hover- 
ing round  their  inexperienced  prey  from  the  ignorant 
or  the  rural  districts  of  this  great  land,  pulling  the  wool 
over  the  eyes  of  the  honest  legislator,  pandering  to  the 
passions  or  the  greed  of  the  baser  one.  Fanny  became 
so  enmeshed  with  politicians,  that  she  attended  every 
political  convention  of  the  Empire  State,  while  as  for 
New  York  City  politics,  her  little  circle  of  friends  and 
confidants  arranged  and  rearranged  their  deals  and  slates 
in  her  very  parlors. 

Contrary  to  the  typical  *' fallen  sister,"  this  one  pre- 
served the  attractive  neatness  and  order  of  her  original 
ways.  Her  flat  was  not  only  tasteful  with  the  Pompeian 
red  and  ''  old  gold  "  that  came  in  with  the  Philadelphia 
Exposition;  in  it  the  air  was  always  balmy  and  fresh,  not  a 
speck  of  dust  was  to  be  seen,  the  chairs  and  couches  could 
not  be  more  comfortable,  and  the  little  suppers  she  served, 
though  simple,  were  perfect  of  their  kind.  So  what  Fanny 
lost  for  the  other  sex  in  looks,  she  made  up  to  it  in  com- 
fort.    She  made  men  **  at  home."     They  would  sit  with 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  333 

her  and  smoke,  sip  her  inspiring  cocktails  and  punches, 
and  open  sometimes  the  heavy  burdens  of  their  business 
fears,  sometimes  the  Hghter  budget  of  their  sporting  ven- 
tures, always  the  latest  club  and  society  scandals — nay, 
when  they  were  very  confidential  they  would  even  laugh 
at  or  cry  down  their  own  wives;  and  to  the  social  outcast 
this  was  the  sweetest  revenge  of  all.  The  pillar  of  the 
little  establishment  came  to  be  a  so-called  "  County " 
Democrat,  who  also  at  that  time  was  filling  one  of  the  high 
municipal  offices  of  New  York.  He  was  a  bachelor,  and 
he  lived  at  home  with  a  pious  old  Episcopalian  mother, 
who,  like  so  many  mothers  of  bachelor  sons,  congratu- 
lated herself  that  her  boy  "  did  not  care  to  marry  and 
leave  her ! " 

But  the  axis  upon  which  it  all  revolved,  the  real  cyno- 
sure of  Fanny's  heart,  remained  the  same  Herman  Hardy 
as  before.  He  was  the  wine  and  sunshine  of  her  life,  and 
her  ever-present  fear  was  that  he  would  fall  in  love,  marry, 
and  be  lost  to  her  forever.  Yet  she  felt  she  could  bear 
anything  rather  than  not  see  him  constantly  about. 

This  son  of  a  rich  father  was  lazy,  witty,  and  devoted  to 
sport  and  soubrettes.  Fanny  was  too  wise  to  show  any 
jealousy ;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  her  policy  to  befriend  the 
stage  favorite  of  the  hour,  and  to  be  ready  with  a  delicate 
after- theatre  collation  whenever  Hardy  chose  to  bring  in 
a  small  party  to  enjoy  it.  The  hunger  of  her  heart  was 
never  appeased,  but  at  least  she  saw  him  constantly. 
Sooner  or  later  every  one  pays  toll  to  the  infinite  force 
and  beauty  of  the  opposite  sex,  and  her  sentiment  for 
Hardy  was  Fanny's  toll.  It  was  infinite,  like  its  source, 
and  her  suffering  from  it  was  infinite  too.  What  was  there 
in  this  careless  youth  that  clutched  her  soul  with  an  iron 
and  unrelenting  grasp?     She  could  not  tell  ;  and  neither 


334  ^£1^   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

can  you  tell,  reader,  when  yo\i  shall  feel  it  on  your  own. 
But  yield  not  to  it,  whether  it  come  to  you  in  youth,  in 
middle  life  or  in  age;  die  rather,  or  "pine  in  sad  expe- 
rience worse  than  death,"  unless  it  come  to  you  in  the 
image  in  which  it  was  created — in  the  divine  and  only 
of  image  of  wedded  and  exclusive  love. 

The  home  which  Fanny  Howe  had  wrecked  through  her 
pursuit  of  sensations  never  again  permanently  united  its 
sundered  elements.  Its  once  devoted  house-band,  or 
''  husband,"  carried  out  the  plan  of  life  which  had  flashed 
before  his  agonized  brain  during  the  first  chaotic  days 
of  his  undeceiving.  He  kept  his  children  at  boarding- 
school  and  Jeannette  remained  with  his  brother  Philip. 
As  the  boys  grew  old  enough,  they  were  sent  to  a  Western 
college,  and  after  their  graduation,  their  father  arranged 
business  openings  for  them  in  a  distant  city.  His  daugh- 
ter developed  much  of  the  musical  talent  of  her  aunt 
Josephine.  At  her  own  earnest  desire,  she  was  sent  to 
Germany  to  complete  her  musical  education.  Her  pro- 
fessor fell  in  love  with  her ;  the  attraction  was  recipro- 
cal;  she  married  him,  and  forgetting  in  love  and  music 
"  her  own  people  and  her  father's  house,"  she  contentedly 
reverted  into  a  European. 

Her  aunt  Jeannette,  from  the  first  absolutely  inconsol- 
able at  the  sending  away  from  her  of  the  child-life  which 
had  become  the  greater  and  better  part  of  her  own,  made 
no  complaint,  but  subsided  into  a  voiceless  despair  which 
in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two  took  actual  shape  before  her 
fancy  as  a  white  and  chilling  fog  perpetually  enveloping 
her.  When  asked  how  she  was,  she  always  answered : 
*'  Well,  but  very  cold."  By  and  by  she  would  sit  for  hours 
before  a  window,  looking  out,  and  if  addressed,  she  would 
answer:    ''See  the   snow  fall!     How  fast  it  comes  down, 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY,  335 

and  how  white  and  still  it  is,  and  so  cold!"  At  last 
she  was  removed  to  Bloomingdale,  where,  after  a  few  years, 
death  found  and  released  her  from  her  imaginary  prison  of 
freezing  mist ;  and  strange  and  sweet  must  have  been  the 
first  restoring  sunshine  of  that  Divine  Love  of  which 
her  own  gentle  spirit  had  been  so  true  and  so  tender  a 
reflection  ! 

David  Howe  did  not  console  himself  with  a  second 
attachment.  At  first  he  lived  at  a  hotel,  but  later  his  club, 
a  very  famous  one,  became  his  home.  He  devoted  him- 
self  largely   to   art  and   philanthropic  associations,  and 

for  some  years  before  his  death  was  afifectionately  held  and 
respected  by  a  wide  and  influential  circle.  His  life  was  the 
breathless  New  York  life  of  many  responsible  citizens — 
breakfast  and  newspaper  from  eight  to  nine;  walk  down 
town  between  nine  and  ten ;  concentrated  ''  business  "  from 
ten  to  three ;  back  in  his  room  at  four ;  between  four  and 
six,  social  calls  or  committee  meetings ;  in  the  club  reading 
oom  or  smoking-room  from  six  to  seven ;  then  dinner,  often 
a  dinner  party,  sometimes  the  opera,  the  theatre,  a  social 
function,  or  another  committee  meeting;  the  midnight  hour 
at  the  club  in  friendly  chat  or  at  the  whist  table ;  and  then 
to  his  bed,  there  often  to  lie  with  a  wakeful  brain  that  was 
getting  on  in  years,  and  so  could  not  readily  sink  away  into 
oblivion  from  its  interests  and  its  cares — an  active, 
pleasant,  useful  existence,  indeed,  and  yet  with  the  entire 
substratum  of  his  kindly  heart  a  black  and  barren  lava 
crust  through  which  it  seemed  to  him  no  human  flower 
again  could  ever  pierce.  At  any  rate,  none  ever  did 
pierce  there.  Loving  and  tireless  toward  all  his  friends, 
he  could  not  feel  for  them — he  could  not  feel  even  for  his 
children — as  he  had  done.     Nothing  was  real  or  intense 


336 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


any  more.  Always  trim,  alert,  genial,  and  helpful,  to  the 
end  he  was  welcome  as  a  young  man  is  welcome ;  and  his 
sudden  death  at  his  club,  about  twelve  years  after  his 
divorce,  was  a  painful  shock  to  his  club  associates.  Sadly 
and  silently  they  grouped  about  his  coffin  for  a  last  fare- 
well ;  but  they  left  it  less  sad,  for  the  smile  on  his  face 
told  them  he  was  glad — oh,  how  glad — to  go  ! 

Fanny  was  terrified  when  she  heard  of  David's  death, 
but  she  need  not  have  been.  His  will  provided  that  his 
estate  should  not  be  divided  during  her  life,  and  that  the 
first  charge  upon  it  should  always  be  the  hundred  dollars 
a  month  which  from  their  separation  he  had  allowed  her. 


THE  BROWNS. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

"  THE    EVIL    THAT    MEN    DO    LIVES    AFTER    THEM." 

The  deaths  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dexter,  and  the  exclusion 
of  Fanny  Howe  from  the  Belmont  hotels,  closed  forever 
the  relations  between  the  Dexter  family  and  its  native 
place;  but  the  ideals  they  had  introduced,  and  the  stand- 
ards they  had  set  up,  remained  to  work  out  their  logical 
results. 

Outward  display,  social  prestige,  sensuous  pleasures,  and 
a  laborless  life — these  were  the  golden  calves  based  on 
their  golden  altar  of  Money  which  Mrs.  Dexter  had  found 
the  ruling  gods  of  her  sex  in  the  American  metropolis  of 
New  York,  before  which  she  joyfully  fell  down  and  wor- 
shipped, to  whose  cultus  she  brought  up  her  children,  and 
into  whose  idolatry  various  Episcopalians  in  her  own 
Belmont  circle  insensibly  let  themselves  be  drawn,  until 
finally  the  whole  tone  and  method  of  the  open  prudent 
and  conscientious  little  town  were  transformed. 

True,  that  the  railroad  people  on  the  hill  were  equally 
responsible  for  it;  for  if  the  Belmont  matrons  abused, 
while  emulating  Mrs.  Dexter,  so  their  husbands,  unless 
their  business  success  depended  on  them,  were  very  apt  to 
denounce  the  Browns  confidentially  as  "  sharp,"  "  un- 
scrupulous," "  hypocrites,"  "  cheats,"  "  scoundrels," 
"  thieves,"  according  to  their  envy  of  or  their  losses  by 
them,  and  then  went  on,  in  precisely  the  Brown  manner,  to 
enlarge  their  own  operations  and  to  try  to  make  money 


338  NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

\ 

fast — yes,  faster  than  in  little  Belmont  it  could  legitimately 

be  made. 

They  wanted  this  adored  money  partly  to  gratify  their 
own  longing  for  power  and  position  which  should  ap- 
proach those  of  the  Browns,  and  also  that  they  might  have, 
not  the  books,  the  pictures,  the  music,  or  the  higher 
education  for  their  offspring  which  money  can  buy;  still 
less  that  they  might  purchase  with  it  a  library,  a  museum, 
a  park,  a  fountain,  or  a  statue  for  Belmont.  No.  They 
simply  wanted  for  themselves  and  their  families  larger 
and  handsomer  houses,  more  comforts  and  luxuries,  and 
many  more  outings  to  the  great  cities.  During  the  Bel- 
mont money-making  craze  not  a  single  boy  was  prepared 
for  college  in  the  place.  The  two  or  three  who  were, 
were  obliged  to  get  their  training  elsewhere,  as  the 
academic  department  of  the  public  school  was  almost 
abandoned. 

No  doubt,  the  inflation  of  prices  that  prevailed  during 
the  Civil  War  had  everything  to  do  with  men's  heads 
being  turned  in  Belmont  as  they  were  everywhere  else  ;  so 
true  it  is  that  when  a  nation's  entire  public  energies  are 
bent  upon  maiming,  killing,  and  robbing  as  many  human 
beings  as  possible,  its  private  ones  rapidly  get  to  be  not 
very  much  better.  Certainly,  in  rural  Belmont  the  finan- 
cial pace  was  as  eager  and  unscrupulous  in  proportion  as 
in  the  greater  business  centres,  and,  as  usual,  the  sanguine 
men,  and  the  short-sighted  men,  and  the  *'  outside  "  men 
were  those  who  eventually  lost  through  the  cool  men,  and 
the  long-headed  men,  and  the  *'  inside  "  men. 

At  first  everybody  prospered  with  the  tremendous  golden 
harvest  which  the  farmers  were  reaping  for  their  produce 
of  every  description.  Within  ten  years  after  the  outbreak 
of  the  Rebellion,  Belmont  drapers  and  grocers  who  once 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  339 

made  their  modest  livelihood  out  of  the  slow  and  steady 
ways  of  country  trade  had  either  given  up  their  retail 
shops  in  order  to  buy  and  sell  on  commission,  or  by  bor- 
rowings and  credits  had  greatly  extended  their  business. 
Following  this  trade-expansion,  they  either  enlarged  their 
old  houses  or  built  new  ones,  and  their  scale  of  living 
then  rose  to  correspond.  Of  course,  the  lawyers  battened 
on  these  flush  and  venturesome  financiers,  so  that  besides 
the  great  perennial  law-suit  of  the  Midland  and  the  Mon- 
treal, various  other  causes  celebres  snugly  lined  the  legal 
pocket,  and  in  vindictiveness  and  cost  mimicked  the  awful 
war  throughout  which  so  lately  the  whole  brood  of  evil 
passions  had  been  unleashed. 

A  specially  fierce  hater  and  would-be  rival  of  the  Browns 
was  an  able  but  vulgar  Belmont  speculator  named  Folsom, 
who  obtained  a  valuable  government  contract  for  trans- 
porting mails  and  passengers  in  stage-coaches  across  the 
western  plains,  and  made  out  of  it  a  large  fortune.  The 
life  of  this  man  was  one  of  well-known  dissoluteness,  but 
he  twice  ran  for  Congress  in  his  district  to  succeed  George 
Brown,  who  was  no  longer  needed  there  by  Austen,  and 
the  second  time  his  money  elected  him.  His  affairs  kept 
him  much  in  Washington  ;  but  opposite  the  Ashurst  home- 
stead in  Belmont  he  built  the  handsomest  house  on  the 
main  Belmont  street,  and  hither  the  densely  ignorant 
women  of  his  family,  converts  from  the  Episcopal  to  the 
Roman  church,  returned  every  summer  to  fire  still  more 
fiercely  the  village  heart  by  a  daily  parade  of  their  Wash- 
ington toilettes,  landau,  horses,  and  colored  coachman. 

The  rigid  Puritanism  of  the  "  hill  ladies  "  never  recog- 
nized these,  as  they  considered,  benighted  renegades  from 
Protestantism  at  all,  but  in  the  Episcopal  church  were  sev- 
eral youthful  matrons  as  eager  as  the  Folsoms  to  divide 


340  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

\ 
the  shreds  of  the  once  Dexter  mantle.  Two  brothers,  who 
had  a  little  money  of  their  own,  came  from  a  neighboring 
hamlet  and  settled  in  Belmont.  One  went  into  law  and 
married  the  richest  heiress  of  Fanny  Dexter's  set.  The 
other  chose  banking,  and  won  as  his  bride  the  second 
richest,  the  first  one's  intimate  friend.  After  the  deaths 
of  the  respective  parents  of  these  young  wives,  they  set  out 
to  enjoy  life  as  nearly  as  possible  on  the  Brown  and  the 
Dexter  basis.  One  of  them  bought  the  old  Ashurst  man- 
sion ,  added  to  it  all  the  ^'  modern  improvements ,  "  fitted 
it  with  portieres,  rugs,  and  bric-k-brac  ,  made  its  wide  lawn 
a  charm  of  verdure  and  bright  flowers,  and  then  kept  it 
mostly  to  herself.  The  other  leased  her  own  childhood's 
home  for  a  term  of  years,  and  divided  her  time  between 
New  York  in  winter  (where  her  husband  flirted  with  Wall 
Street),  Saratoga  in  summer,  and  the  Austen  House  in  Bel- 
mont during  the  spring  and  autumn. 

Counting  the  Browns,  their  numerous  relations,  and  the 
'*  fashionable  "  Episcopalians,  it  was,  after  all,  but  one  or 
two  dozen  families  who  among  them  were  unconsciously 
making  little  Belmont  enact  the  fable  of  the  frog  and  the 
ox;  but  in  so  small  a  community  this  was  more  than 
enough  to  leaven  the  whole  lump.  And  why  not?  Do 
not  New  York's  exclusive  **  Four  Hundred"  leaven  the 
seventy  millions  of  the  rest  of  their  country?  Of  course, 
the  majority  in  Belmont,  as  everywhere  else,  were  artisans, 
laborers,  and  shop-keepers,  who  went  on  precisely  as 
people  in  their  condition  everywhere  must,  earning  by 
daily  toil  just  enough  to  satisfy  daily  wants,  and  in  their 
preoccupation  little  heeding  the  frothings  and  agitations  of 
the  tiny  social  whirlpool  above  their  heads  ;  but  the  fever- 
ishness  reached  down  even  to  them,  and  a  far  greater  pro- 
portion of  their  youth  of   both  sexes  gave  themselves  to 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  341 

excitement  and  dissipation  than  had  been  the  case  in  the 
earlier  time.  The  swarms  of  them  about  the  shops  and 
the  railroad  station  in  the  evening  were  surprising.  The 
little  place  was  like  a  bee-hive  of  restlessness  and  indus- 
try. Everybody  dressed  in  the  fashion  in  Belmont,  and 
everybody  tried  to  *'  get  away  "  at  least  once  a  year — the 
swells  to  the  far  shops  and  theatres  of  New  York,  the 
scrubs  to  the  nearer  shops  and  theatres  of  Boston. 

As  the  fathers  could  not  too  early  put  their  impatient 
sons  behind  their  counters  to  begin  the  race  for  wealth, 
the  ignorance  and  unculture  of  even  the  better-class  young 
men  became  something  melancholy,  their  pleasures  so 
low  and  degraded,  that  sad-eyed  matrons  shook  their  heads 
over  the  occasional  betrothals  of  these  literally  ''  whited 
sepulchres"  to  the  unsuspecting  Belmont  maidens.  It 
seemed  profanation  too  terrible,  risk  too  inhuman  to  be 
suffered.  The  large  influx  to  the  Brown  workshops  of 
French  Canadians — said  to  l^e  the  most  unteachable  of  all 
our  aliens,  except  the  Chinese — had  so  increased  the  illit- 
eracy and  the  demoralization,  that  its  residents  were  fain 
to  admit,  and  almost  with  a  touch  of  pride,  that  '*  Belmont 
was  as  bad  as  New  York." 

The  slanders  of  the  place  became  malignant  beyond 
belief.  Every  character  in  Belmont,  from  the  ministers 
andtheir  families  down,  was  pulled  to  pieces  and  subjected 
to  the  most  outrageous  suspicions  and  imputations  by  the 
loafing  lawyers  and  gossipy  merchants.  They  judged  others 
by  themselves  ;  for  among  themselves  they  were  not  ashamed 
to  maintain  principles  that  would  better  have  befitted  a 
coterie  of  Paris  roti^s  than  the  sons  of  their  Puritan  fore- 
fathers. Let  country  matrons  tremble  when  their  hus- 
bands travel  citywards  on  ''  business."  A  forest  full  of 
pitfalls  and  serpents  is  not  an  exaggerated  image  of  the 


342  NEW    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


snares  and  seductions  placed  in  their  way  by  the  ^*  hos- 
pitality "  clerks  of  the  wholesale  firms  who  strive  to  get 
and  to  keep  their  trade. 

The  evil  must  have  been  startling  when  the  rector  of  the 
Episcopal  church  stood  before  his  people  and  openly  pro- 
tested against  it.  So  ignored  by  the  Protestant  pulpits  of 
this  land  is  the  special  besetting  sin  of  humanity,  that  but 
few  persons  in  their  whole  lives  have  heard  so  much  as  one 
sermon  against  it.  Rarely,  indeed,  does  even  an  allusion 
to  it  occur  in  a  passing  admonitory  sentence.  Yet  this 
man  felt  compelled  to  tell  his  Belmont  flock  to  their  faces 
that  "  licentiousness  is  eating  out  the  very  soul  of  this 
community."  Did  the  community  take  the  warning  and 
reform?    Nay,  the  next  year  that  clergyman  was  not  there  ! 

Mind  precedes  and  moulds  matter;  and  if  the  aims  and 
morals  of  the  little  town  thus  echoed  those  of  New  York, 
even  as  the  roaring,  unswept,  and  unwashed  marts  of  the 
metropolis  perfectly  expressed  the  recklessness  and  ungod- 
liness that  schemed  therein — "  cleanliness  "  being  ever  one 
of  the  first  products  of  '*  godliness  " — so  did  the  business 
aspect  of  Belmont  come  in  kind,  if  not  in  degree,  to  a 
similar  complexion.  Never  were  central  streets  and  side- 
walks more  dirty  and  frowsy,  nor  weeds  by  the  roadway 
more  rank  and  unseemly.  The  village  green  was  a  gener- 
ous oblong,  planted  by  the  village  founders  with  a  double 
row  of  maples.  Nearly  forty  years  after  the  completion 
of  the  railroad  to  Belmont,  these  trees  had  grown  into  a 
magnificent  leafy  arcade,  but  the  verdant  slope  itself,  upon 
which  fronted  the  principal  stores,  the  banks,  the  hotels, 
the  schoolhouse,  the  courthouse,  and  the  churches,  and 
past  one  end  of  which  Austen  Brown  went  once  or  twice 
every  day  of  his  life,  remained  through  the  forty  years  ab- 
solutely unkempt,  bordered  on  three  sides  by  the  original 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  343 

unsightly  ditches,  the  grass  either  uncut,  or  worn  bare  with 
baseball  playing,  not  a  single  walk  laid  out,  and  the  whole 
area  seamed  in  every  direction  with  the  footpaths  which 
individual  convenience  had  trodden  across  it. 

The  delicious  brook  that  serpentined  on  the  outskirts  of 
Belmont,  the  children's  joy  and  wonderland — for  the  one 
thing  in  the  universe  that  exactly  befits  the  childish  mind 
and  fills  the  childish  imagination  is  a  brook,  and  this  was 
a  perfect  one  ;  a  baby  river  for  baby  man  to  play  with,  and 
really  a  phenomenon  from  the  fascinating  variety  of  rip- 
ple, cascade,  rocky  dell,  and  quiet  pool  that  it  presented 
within  the  compass  of  a  furlong — this  brook.  Nature's 
love-gift  to  the  Belmont  little  ones,  the  Brown  magnates 
should  have  reserved  as  a  precious  treasure  to  their 
children's  children  to  the  farthest  generation,  if  for  no 
better  reason.  But,  dull,  stupid,  besotted  beings  that  they 
were,  they  allowed  the  hill-forests  that  guarded  its  sources 
to  be  cut  down ;  they  let  the  secluded  field  through  which 
it  wound  its  darling  way  be  cut  up  into  building  lots, 
and  the  helpless  stream  to  be  spanned  by  streets  until, 
like  another  Undine,  from-  a  ruthless  community  all 
unworthy  of  its  playful  sweetness  it  vanished,  never  to 
return. 

A  near  neighbor  of  the  brook  was  the  most  magnificent 
elm  in  the  township.  Though  it  stood  on  the  field  border, 
it  flung  its  immense  dome  of  drooping  foliage  across  the 
entire  roadway.  But  its  original  owner  died,  and  his 
successor  thought  that  the  giant  shaded  and  also  weakened 
the  surrounding  soil  too  much.  He  cut  it  down,  and  even 
Belmont  groaned.  Yet  how  easily  might  the  Browns  have 
started  a  small  subscription  to  buy  the  begrudged  bit  of 
land,  and,  moving  back  the  farmer's  fence,  and  placing  a 
few   resting-stones    about    its    roots,    have    recessed    the 


344  NEM^    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

mdnarch  there  ''  for  glory  and  for  beauty,"  and  for  the 
comfort,  too,  of  the  wayfarer  through  another  century  ! 

Besides  the  ancient  maples  along  her  oldest  street,  Bel- 
mont is  embowered  in  elms  and  lindens  throughout  her 
newer  ways  as  well.  Did  the  Browns  inspire  their  plant- 
ing? Not  so.  It  was  begun  by  the  aesthetic  energy  of  a 
college-bred  young  man,  who  got  up  a  little  '*  Tree-Plant- 
ing Association  "  which  lived  long  enough  to  set  an  exam- 
ple, and  then,  for  want  of  encouragement,  perished.  Its 
organizer  would  have  cared  for  the  brook,  for  the  green, 
for  the  elm,  and  for  all  the  other  charms  of  Belmont,  had 
it  been  given  him  to  do.  For  business  he  was  unfitted, 
but  he  had  the  tastes  and  talents  to  make  him  the  decorator 
and  historian  of  his  native  place  ;  possibly,  as  his  experience 
enlarged,  of  his  native  State. 

Nobody  saw  it.  As  with  the  wasted  Mrs.  Gardner,  no- 
body cared  that  this  type  of  artist-citizen  should  find  his 
appropriate  niche.  He  could  not  create  such  a  niche  for 
himself;  he  had  neither  the  means  nor  the  force.  So, 
after  making  one  business  effort  after  another  amid  the 
hard  Belmont  competitions,  and  failing  in  all,  as  he  found 
himself  and  his  family  coming  to  want,  his  mind  gave 
way  and  he  killed  himself.  Only  the  elms  which  he 
planted  wave  their  long  arms  and  sigh  a  requiem  for  the 
gentle  spirit  which  called  forth  their  leafy  brotherhood, 
and  which,  encouraged,  might  have  secured  so  many  other 
attractions  for  his  lovely  birthplace. 

The  active  witnesses  for  culture  in  Belmont  at  last 
dwindled  almost  to  a  solitary  one,  a  refined  and  highly 
educated  woman,  who,  after  the  Gardners  and  the  Ashursts 
had  gone,  tried  to  establish  a  school  there.  Success  re- 
warded her  for  a  time,  but  in  the  end  she  had  to  leave 
the  place  for  want  of  patronage.     Owing  to  the  zeal  of 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   SI  UDY.  345 

several  converts  from  the  Episcopal  church,  Belmont  had 
become  a  Catholic  headquarters.  To  the  large  and 
hideous  church  for  the  Irish  already  in  one  of  the  most 
conspicuous  positions,  another  was  added  for  the  numer- 
ous French  population.  A  corps  of  Ladies  of  the  Heart 
of  Mary,  from  Montreal,  then  opened  a  girl's  boarding 
and  day  school  at  the  low  prices  possible  only  to  recluses 
who  are  allowed  but  the  barest  necessaries  of  life,  and 
various  of  the  "  best  "  Belmont  people  forthwith  doomed 
their  young  daughters  for  several  years  to  the  cooping 
influence  and  to  the  flimsy  and  false  instruction  of  these 
inevitably  ignorant  women ;  for  how  can  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic nun,  be  her  skill  in  French,  music,  and  embroidery 
never  so  great,  be  anything  but  ignorant?  The  very 
terms  of  her  profession  vow  her  to  the  densest  ignorance 
— the  ignorance  of  prejudice  and  fear  against  everything 
that  is  out  of  sympathy  with  the  ruthless. masculine  hier- 
archy which  closes  round  not  only  her  spirit,  but  also  the 
poor  flouted  body  that  contains  her  spirit.  One  wonders 
whether  this  hierarchy,  if  it  could  indeed  wave  a  magician's 
wand,  would,  against  the  divine  painting  of  the  Creator, 
command  the  colors  of  the  rose  and  the  tulip  to  fade  into 
ashen  and  blackened  tints?  Yet,  with  far  more  impious 
rashness,  it  does  say  to  the  feminine  souls  who  trust  it : 
"  Violate  all  the  instincts  for  joy  and  beauty  that  your 
Maker  has  implanted  within  your  women's  hearts  ;  make 
yourselves  as  uncouth  and  ghastly  to  yourselves  and  your 
fellow-creatures  as  you  can  ;  shut  down  on  every  tie  and 
sentiment  by  which  your  Father  in  Heaven  has  bound  you 
to  your  kind ;  then  we,  the  priests  who  have  placed  our- 
selves between  your  God  and  you,  will  exalt  you  as  *  The 
Religious  .^ '  " 


CHAPTER  XL. 


THE   BUBBLE   BURSTS. 


Although  two  or  three  failures  occurred  rather  early 
in  the  social  tran'sformation  of  Belmont  by  which  long- 
respected  names  went  under  a  cloud,  for  years  the  great 
fish  of  the  pond,  the  Browns,  swam  nobly  on,  and  all  the 
lesser  ones  kept  pluckily  after  them.  Some  wondered 
whether  the  bottom  would  ever  fall  out,  or  whether  there 
were  any  bottom;  but  so  long  as  credit  was  as  good  as 
cash,  and  promises  almost  equivalent  to  payment,  what 
difference  did  it  make?  The  stock-holders  of  the  Mid- 
land certainly  had  got  nothing  out  of  it,  while  the  officers 
were  as  certainly  rolling  in  wealth  and  were  also  the  pil- 
lars of  the  Orthodox  church.  To  the  average  Belmont 
mind  it  was  all  a  moral  and  financial  hocus-pocus,  but  the 
average  Belmont  mind  abstained  from  a  too  deep  study  of 
causes,  and  in  the  cheerful  American  spirit  *'  guessed 
things  would  come  out  all  right." 

But  one  day,  within  twenty  years  after  the  rise  of  the 
Belmont  ambition,  our  topping  and  self-confident  little 
community  was  convulsed  at  the  announcement  that  noth- 
ing less  than  the  Belmont  Rolling-Mill  and  the  Belmont 
Foundry,  managed  respectively  by  George  Brown  and  by 
his  relative  and  next  neighbor,  Henry  Austen,  had  sus- 
pended payment.  Village  speculation  was  awe-stricken 
in  wondering  what  such  Olympians  would  do  in  such  dis- 
asters. The  failures  were  so  utter,  that,  as  a  specimen,  one 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  347 

poor  woman  who  had  saved  fifteen  hundred  dollars  by  rais- 
ing and  selling  eggs  and  poultry,  and  who  had  entrusted 
the  whole  to  George  Brown  for  investment,  was  told, 
when  she  implored  him  to  give  back  at  least  some  of  her 
money  for  the  support  of  her  old  age,  that  he  had  nothing 
wherewithal  to  pay  her,  because  all  that  was  left  was  his 
wife's.  Foreseeing  his  fate,  the  pious  deacon  had  trans- 
ferred everything  he  could  lay  his  hands  on  to  Mrs.  George. 

The  gossips  looked  in  vain,  however,  for  any  change  in 
the  spirit  of  the  George  Brown  dream.  On  the  contrary, 
to  their  infinite  scandal,  that  very  same  summer  the  family 
drove  serenely  about  behind  a  handsome  new  pair  of  car- 
riage horses.  A  few  years  previously,  the  eldest  Miss 
Brown  had  married  the  son  of  a  millionnaire  mine-owner 
somewhere,  and  after  the  failure,  the  millionnaire  kindly 
stepped  in  as  the  buyer  of  the  rolling-mill,  and  thus  saved 
its  head  from  the  social  and  financial  extinction  that  must 
otherwise  have  been  his. 

His  neighbor  and  cousin,  Henry  Austen,  was  less  for- 
tunate. He  had  to  sacrifice  everything — horses,  carriage, 
the  lovely  hill  villa,  yes,  even  the  semblance  of  a  home — 
and  betake  himself  to  the  far  West ;  while  his  exclusive  wife, 
her  dowry  nearly  annihilated,  and,  what  was  worse,  with 
a  beggared  heart  as  well — for  she  discovered  that  she  was 
not  the  only  woman  upon  whom  her  money  had  been  squan- 
dered— went  back  to  her  relatives  in  Connecticut. 

All  this  was  but  the  beginning  of  sorrows.  With  his 
handsome  fortune  of  two  or  three  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars, Folsom,  the  successful  stage-contractor  and  Con- 
gressman, had  founded  a  bank  which  would  easily  have 
maintained  his  prosperity,  had  he  been  satisfied  with 
government  bonds  as  his  securities.  But  a  new  railroad 
in  Canada  made  dazzling  promises,  and,  as  he  thought. 


348  NEIV    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 


opened  a  prospect  of  his  becoming  a  peer  of  the  hated  Aus- 
ten Brown.  To  this  road  he  surrendered  all  his  precious 
bonds  in  return  for  two  or  three  times  their  nominal 
value  in  stock,  and  for  a  period  all  too  short  dreamed  of 
himself  as  a  millionnaire.  He  forgot  that  Canadian  rail- 
road managers  might  not  have  looked  on  at  the  career  of 
the  Midland  and  its  dependencies  in  vain,  and  little  by 
little  the  fatuous  speculator  realized  that  the  bonds  for 
which  he  had  exchanged  his  all  were  as  worthless  as  the 
owners  of  the  Midland  mortgages  had  long  ago  found 
theirs.  His  bank  foundered  like  a  scuttled  ship,  and  his 
flaunting  pomp  and  ostentation  shrank  soon  after  into 
a  modest  room  for  himself  and  his  wife  at  the  village 
hotel.  His  once  beautiful  and  dashing  daughter  became 
so  poverty-stricken  that  she  had  \fy  milk  her  own  cow; 
and  when,  a  few  years  later,  his  granddaughter  grew  to 
womanhood,  she  married  an  Irishman.  With  money, 
occupation,  health,  and  self-respect  all  gone,  the  broken 
profligate  at  last  listened  to  his  "  better  half,"  and,  enter- 
ing the  Roman  church,  devoted  the  remainder  of  his  list- 
less days  exclusively  to  saving  his  soul  after  the  Roman 
manner. 

The  Folsom  tragedy  brought  hosts  of  others  in  its  train 
— in  fact,  proved  the  knell  of  Belmont  as  it  then  existed  ; 
for,  from  that  on,  various  of  the  hitherto  "  booming  "  busi- 
ness houses  went  down  one  after  another  like  a  row  of 
bricks.  Soon  a  terrible  fear  shivered  through  the  little 
community  that  the  Savings  Bank,  of  which  Austen 
Brown's  own  brother-in-law  was  the  president,  was  not 
sound.  A  run  began  upon  it,  which  was  abruptly  stopped 
by  the  closing  of  its  doors  and  the  flight  of  its  guilty 
president,  a  defaulter  for  fifty  thousand  dollars.  Crash- 
ing down  upon  this  disaster  and  disgrace  the  Bank  of  Bel- 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  349 

mont  itself,  established  two  generations  before  by  a  cau- 
tious and  honorable  citizen,  first  suspended  payment,  then 
collapsed  altogether.  The  chief  managers,  the  cashier 
and  his  lawyer  brother,  who  had  married  the  two  Episco- 
palian heiresses,  had  speculated  in  Wall  Street,  until  this 
inexcusable  catastrophe  was  the  result.  As  both  families 
kept  their  homes  and  made  little  change  in  their  living 
beyond  giving  up  their  long  New  York  visits  every  year,  it 
was  evident  that  at  least  the  men  had  not  robbed  their 
wives.  They  continued  to  sit  at  the  doors  of  their  pews, 
and  to  be  received  at  the  Communion  Table,  nor  did  their 
social  recognition  suffer  in  the  least;  though  it  was  per- 
haps true,  that  if  the  honest  people  of  Belmont  had  decided 
to  cut  all  the  dishonest  bnes,  ''society"  might  have  be- 
come a  vanishing  point ! 

For  several  gloomy  and  sullen  years  our  beautiful  Bel- 
mont, the  county  town  and  the  county  centre,  was  actually 
without  a  bank.  Enterprise  and  ambition  were  paralyzed  ; 
boasting  cowed  and  silenced.  Property  fell  pitifully,  and 
rents  in  proportion.  The  dishonesty  which  had  become 
its  atmosphere  was  well  exemplified  when  the  proceeds 
of  a  fair,  which  was  held  to  save  the  once  flourishing 
Belmont  band  from  extinction, — for  even  in  its  humilia- 
tion Belmont  loved  music, — were  stolen  before  they 
reached  the  band  treasury!  The  town  was  crowned  with 
its  last  and  darkest  infamy  when  the  Chief  Justice  of  the 
State,  the  whilom  chancellor  who  had  lent  his  bench  and 
his  ermine  to  Austen  Brown's  flagitious  schemes,  and  who 
still  resided  in  Belmont,  was  dragged  through  the  mire  of 
a  legal  trial  for  gross  and  almost  open  immoralities.  Clad 
in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  Belmont  had  ample  leisure  to 
reflect  whether,  for  the  small  fry  of  business,  at  least, 
honesty  is  not,  after  all,  the  best  policy. 


35°  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

\ 

For  the  great  ones,  the  moral,  doubtless,  has  never  been 
to  the  sad  Belmont  apprehension  quite  so  clear;  for,  amid 
the  humiliating  ruin  of  so  many  contemporaries,  the 
monopolistic,  mountain-like  wealth  of  Austen  Brown  still 
towered  over  his  native  village,  seemingly  as  secure  as  the 
hill  on  which  his  great  house  was  built.  The  poor  and 
the  obscure,  as  Belmont  found  to  its  cost,  have  but  a  short 
tether  to  run  before  they  realize  all  too  vividly  that  "  the 
wages  of  sin  is  death."  With  the  very  rich  the  arc  of  the 
circle  is  so  much  larger,  that  it  can  out-span  one  and  some- 
times many  succeeding  lives. 

The  potent  and  far-grasping  Austen  Brown  was,  there- 
fore, eventually  gathered  to  his  fathers  in  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  the  money  that  he  and  all  Belmont  so  passionately 
adored.  As  he  grew  old,  his  chief  care,  like  that  of 
most  old  rich  men,  became  his  health;  his  last  ambition 
still  the  long-cherished  one  of  being  sent  as  Senator  to 
H'ashington.  But  the  grim  summons  came  and  laid  him 
down  to  his  long  sleep  in  his  triple  steel  casket,  with  this 
one  honor  from  his  sycophantic  little  State  denied.  His 
death  was  soon  followed  by  that  of  one  of  his  daughters, 
and  after  this  double  bereavement,  his  wife,  to  her  own 
infinite  satisfaction,  ascended,  as  she  felt,  from  the  tram- 
mels ot  "  orthodox  "  Congregationalism  into  the  congenial 
clouds  and  mystifications  of  Theosophy.  The  revelations 
of  Mme.  Blavatsky  superseded  the  revelations  of  Calvin, 
and,  for  some  years  before  her  own  departure,  she  ceased 
to  eat  meat  lest  she  unwittingly  partake  of  the  latest 
incarnation  of  her  lamented  lord. 

The  ocean  is  salt,  and  the  countless  streams  which  keep 
it  full  are  fresh,  and  yet  they  say  that  in  reality  it  is  these 
latter  that  carry  down,  from  the  soils  through  which  they 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  35 1 

wind,  the  saline  particles  which  all  infuse  the  briny  deep. 
And  so  we  think  of  the  great  man-made  town  as  vile,  and 
the  sweet  God-made  country  as  pure ;  but  can  it  be  that  it 
is  the  polluted  moral  drainage  from  countless  rural  ham- 
lets which  in  reality  makes  and  keeps  the  vast  metropolis 
so  deeply  corrupt? 

If  modem  Christianity  be  not  a  sham,  how,  in  a  little 
place  full  of  Protestant  churches, — a  Congregational,  a 
Methodist,  a  Baptist,  a  Universalist,  and  possessing  also 
an  Episcopal  and  two  great  Catholic  churches, — could  such 
a  career  as  that  of  Belmont,  with  its  Browns  and  Dexters 
and  their  following,  nearly  all  of  them  church  members, 
begin,  culminate,  and  end?  How  could  the  single  coal, 
brought  by  a  shajlow  woman  from  the  great  altars  of 
Mammon  and  Fashion  that  flame  ever  skyward  in  New 
York,  kindle  in  the  simple  village  a  conflagration  such 
that  the  ancient  morals  and  standards  and  aims  were  drawn 
as  by  a  whirlwind  into  a  fiery  vortex  of  emulation  and 
speculation  until  all  were  consumed;  until  for  a  time  little 
remained,  little  was  felt,  but  blackness,  desolation,  and 
shame  ? 

The  clergy  of  all  those  churches,  no  doubt,  faithfully 
preached  the  gospel  of  Christ  as  they  conceived  it.  Can 
it  be  that  they  left  something  of  that  perfect  gospel  out — 
that  since  the  days  of  Luther  the  Protestant  clergy  have 
left  something  out — that  since  the  days  of  Christ  Himself 
the  Universal  Church  has  left  something  out,  and  that 
thence  largely  come  these  human  wanderings  and  tragedies  ? 


CHAPTER   XLI. 

MAN    AND    NATURE. 

Beautiful  New  England  !  Exquisite  New  England  ! 
Special  poetic  heritage  given  by  the  Divine  Father  to 
the  human  children  who  of  all  the  world  in  the  seventeenth 
century  loved  Him  the  best, — to  those  sober  English  Pil- 
grims and  Puritans  who  with  all  their  hearts  believed  in 
*'  Duty  the  aim  of  life ;  the  Bible  its  ruky 

The  Puritan  descendant  has  perchance  noted  how  the 
great  religions  of  the  world  have  in  turn  expressed  them- 
selves in  more  or  less  sublime  and  beautiful  forms  of  art, 
and  has  felt  .mortified  that  thus  far  no  new  art  departure 
has  glorified  the  intense  religion  of  his  ancestors. 

But,  after  all,  are  many  things  more  original,  more  fair, 
more  iiisthetic,  than  the  perfected  New  England  village, 
such,  for  instance,  as  Deerfield,  Massachusetts,  with  its 
lofty  aisles  of  streets  in  over-arching  green  and  the  em- 
bowered homes  on  bloomy  unbarred  lawns  which  open 
upon  them? 

Is  not  this,  as  it  were,  cathedral-village,  which  the  New 
Englander  initiated  and  has  carried  with  him  all  over  the 
country,  as  satisfying  an  ideal  in  its  way  as  the  grand 
Gothic  fanes  themselves?  I  think  so;  and  if  that 
Consummation  of  the  Beautiful,  the  "White  City"  of 
the  Chicago  Exposition,  was  largely  planned  and  carried 
out  by  men  of  New  England  antecedents,  who  shall  say 
whether  the  Puritan  soul,  ramifving  silentlv  for  two  cen- 


NEW    YORK .    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  353 

turies  until  it  had  reached  a  thousand  miles  west  of 
Plymouth  Rock,  did  not  there  suddenly  up-blossom,  and 
like  a  mighty  rose  unfold,  not  alone  for  its  Columbian 
World's  Fair  mission,  but  also  as  an  earnest  of  the  new 
and  multiform  beauty  into  which  this  Puritan  civilization 
— the  progressive,  the  ever-learning,  the  ever-Christian, 
and  hence  the  only  true  **  American  "  civilization — shall 
yet  embody  itself  ? 

But  if  New  England  has  thus  blessed  and  led  the  land 
in  the  Ideal,  not  less,  but  more,  does  the  responsibility 
rest  upon  her  opulent  sons,  upon  her  able  and  successful 
Austen  Browns,  to  cherish  and  preserve  her  precious  dower 
of  natural  beauty ;  and  we  must  not  be  deemed  over-harsh 
to  them,  but  simply  heart-true  to  Her,  if  we  demand  this 
of  them. 

In  the  providence  of  God,  the  chief  reason  for  the  ex- 
istence of  the  ri(  li  would  seem  to  be  the  promotion  and 
maintaining  of  Beauty — beauty  in  their  manners,  beauty 
in  their  dress,  beauty  in  their  homes,  beauty  throughout 
the  bounds  of  their  possessions.  Without  them,  beauty, 
except  Nature's  beauty,  in  this  our  age  of  mechanical 
industry,  would  hardly  exist ;  for  the  rich  alone  among 
men  and  women  have  that  margin  of  income  which  first 
gives  them  the  education  and  travel  that  cultivate  the  sense 
of  beauty,  and  then  enables  them  to  indulge  it.  There- 
fore they  should  be,  and  therefore  they  must  be,  unless 
they  desire  eventually  to  be  taxed  off  the  face  of  an  indig- 
nant earth,  the  exemplars  and  leaders  in  the  creation  of 
beauty,  not  alone  for  themselves,  but  equally  for  the  vil- 
lages, the  towns,  the  cities,  the  counties,  the  States — nay, 
the  wide  land  itself — in  which  they  dwell. 

Nature,  which  some  one  has  well  called  the  *'  art  of 
God,"  has  done  so  much  for  beauty,  and  intelligent  man 


354         NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

\ 
needs  do  so  little  to  preserve  and  enhance  it !  Yet  even 
that  little  in  his  Ijlindness  or  liis  self-absorption  he  neg- 
lects, and  so  beauty  perishes ;  the  joy  which  is  alone 
beauty's  child  cannot  be  born ;  life  saddens  and  sullens^; 
for  relief  it  often  descends  to  vice,  and  from  vice  rolls 
down  to  death— the  death  of  the  body  to  youth  and  health, 
the  death  of  the  soul  to  happiness.  On  this  unhappy 
theme  the  wonderful  but  tragic  Ibsen  drama  rings  half  its 
changes. 

And  for  this  are  any  so  responsible  as  the  rich  ?  Such 
is  their  prestige,  such  the  glamour  and  fascination  of  the 
beauty  with  which  they  surround  their  lives,  that  mankind 
is  only  too  anxious  to  imitate  them — is  only  too  glad  to 
follow  where  they  lead.  As  Goethe  observed,  we  love  the 
rich  if  only  they  are  "  half-kind,"  if  only  they  are  '*  not 
brutal ;  "  so  natural  is  it  to  look  up  to,  and  to  lean  upon, 
and  to  work  for  those  who '  are  strong  and  preeminent 
and  magnificent.  And  for  the  creation  of  public  beauty 
they  need  not  give  more  than  their  share,  their  propor- 
tion. If  the  rich  would  give  of  their  tens,  of  their  hun- 
dreds, of  their  thousands,  the  poor  would  cheerfully  spare, 
in  like  ratio,  of  their  units ;  and  thus  all-pervading  beauty 
and  its  resulting  joy  be  the  possession  and  heritage  of  all. 

To  be  able  to  create,  to  be  able  to  leave  behind  one, 
something  beautiful  !  To  cooperate  with  God  in  His 
universe  so  as  to  swell  the  harmony  of  that  universe  instead 
of  striking  a  discord  in  it !  Oh,  what  a  privilege  !  What 
a  dignity  !  What  an  ecstasy  !  To  think  that  mere  human 
beings,  things  of  a  day,  should  have  it  in  their  power  thus 
to  help  Omnipotence,  and  that  it  does  not  occur  to  them 
to  do  it;  that,  like  Austen  Brown,  they  can  plod  on,  week 
after  week,  month  after  month,  year  after  year,  with  ugli- 
ness beneath   their  feet,  ugliness  by  their  side,  ugliness 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   S'/IDY.  355 

before  them,  and  ugliness  behind  them ;  escaping  from 
ugliness  only  when  they  are  within  their  own  gates,  and 
never  turn  and  say  to  their  lesser  brethren  :  ''  Come,  let  us 
border  our  glaring  roads  with  overhanging  trees,  and 
change  these  wayside  weeds  to  wild  flowers  and  grass. 
With  our  own  home  talent  let  us  carve  a  seat  here,  lift  a 
statue  there,  fling  an  arch  yonder,  that  consolation  and 
delight  may  spring  to  the  hearts,  and  smiles  and  gayety  to 
the  lips  of  the  passers-by." 

In  Newport,  where  every  house  of  the  ''summer  col- 
ony" is  set  in  velvet  and  also  surrounded  with  flowers 
everywhere  that  the  trained  gardeners  can  find  excuse  to 
put  them,  not  so  very  many  years  ago  I  marked  on  the 
stately  Ocean  Avenue,  where  drive  the  great  ladies  every 
afternoon,  roadside  stretches  actually  dense  with  thistles, 
to  say  nothing  of  other  uncomely  and  melancholy  weeds. 
Yet  nowhere  do  the  wild  roses  and  the  honeysuckles  grow 
for  the  mere  permission  as  they  do  in  Newport.  How  easy 
for  the  gardeners,  in  the  winter  time,  when  the  cottages  are 
closed,  and  they  only  are  left  in  charge  of  the  lawns  and 
conservatories,  to  plant  along  the  fences  slips  of  wild  rose 
and  of  honeysuckle,  and  in  a  few  years  every  road  leading 
out  of  Newport  would  be  lined  on  either  side  with  wreath- 
ing and  fragrant  blossoms  !  Are  not  thistles  as  distressing 
on  the  outside  of  one's  gates  as  within  them,  and  flowers 
as  lovely  ?  To  myself,  even  in  childhood,  all  the  angles 
of  the  rail  fences  seemed  little  homes  made  for  some- 
thing charming  ;  and  as  for  the  New  England  stone  fences, 
how  often  beyond  any  art  is  the  alternation  of  tree,  bush, 
plant  and  vine  that  springs  up  along  their  lines  when  they 
are  left  simply  undisturbed  ! 

The  wild  rose,  by  the  way,  ought  to  be  our  national 
flower,  for  the  following  reasons  : 


3S^^  Nl'^W    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

First,  its  perfume — perfume  being  strangely  lost  sight  of 
by  the  advocates  of  various  flowers  for  this  great  distinc- 
tion, though  that  element  is,  of  course,  the  very  basis  of 
the  flower  idea  :  and  no  scentless  flower  should  be  thought 
of  for  a  moment. 

Second,  its  imiversaiity ;  wild  roses  being  native  every- 
where in  the  United  States,  even  to  the  snows  of  Alaska. 

Third,  its  co/o?- ;  there  being  very  little  rose  color  in 
nature,  and  consequently  when  the  eye  catches  sight  of  a 
patch  of  wild  roses  the  pleasure  is  vivid.  In  the  autumn 
the  scarlet  of  the  ripened  berry  is  also  very  effective.  Were 
the  wild  rose  our  national  flower,  it  would  not  be  twenty- 
five  years  before  our  roads  would  be  bordered  extensively 
with  it,  and  thus  a  very  great  color  ornament  be  added  to 
every-day  out-door  nature. 

Fourth,  its  symbolism  ;  for  just  as  culture  has  taken  the 
multitudinous  but  monotonous  stamens  of  the  wild  rose, 
and,  by  turning  them  into  petals,  has  evolved  the  hundreds 
of  varieties  of  double  roses  of  every  degree  of  splendor 
and  beauty,  so  do  American  institutions  take  the  pas- 
sive, indistinguishable  masses  that  land  on  our  shores,  and 
train  them  into  conscious  and  responsible  citizens,  each 
and  every  one  of  whom  may,  and  many  of  whom  do,  con- 
tribute a  special  petal  of  fragrance,  form,  and  color  to  the 
progressive  unfolding  of  the  millennial  American  ideal. 

An  American  Catholic  editor  once  wrote — and  it  is  one 
of  the  very  few  suggestions  of  value  to  the  American 
people  that  I  remember  from  the  Catholic  press — *'  The 
people  should  have  the  river  banks  ;  roads  and  paths  should 
wind  by  all  the  streams;  playgrounds  and  parks  should  be 
placed  along  them." 

Let  us  amend  this  wise  and  just  demand  by  saying  that 
not   areas  of  ''parks,"    but   areas  of  forest,   of  wild   and 


NklV    YORK:    A    SYMPHOAWC  STUDY.  357 

genuine  woods,  should  be  preserved  along  the  streams,  so 
that  the  successive  generations  of  Americans  may  in  their 
childhood  come  close  to  nature,  as  before  them  their 
fathers  did,  and  as  it  is  possible  for  children  to  come  *'  in 
the  woods  "  only  I  No  one  who  had  as  a  child  the  inex- 
pressible privilege  of  playing  daily  in  a  forest  for  even  a 
few  summers,  can  feel  content  that  all  American  children 
should  not  have  this  delicious  experience  ;  and  among  the 
oversights  of  our  hitherto  national  record,  none  is  more 
sorrowful  than,  when  the  "  forest  primeval  "  could  be  had 
for  the  taking,  each  settlement  did  not  reserve  for  its  little 
ones  their  own  portion  of  the  mystic  shade.  Not  to 
receive  that  early  baptism  and  deep  spiritual  embrace 
from  our  beautiful  Earth -Mother  is  to  go  through  life  an 
orphaned  soul  indeed,  and  will  Oregon  and  Washington, 
those  superb,  forest-clad,  final  States,  make  a  similar 
mistake  ? 

Miss  Harriet  Martineau  visited  this  country  in  1833-34, 
and  travelled  as  far  south  as  Charleston  and  as  far  west  as 
Chicago.  She  recorded  that  the  land  could  never  again 
be  as  beautiful  as  it  was  then,  because  every  town  and  set- 
tlement were  surrounded  by  forest.  In  fact,  she  said  it 
was  not  possible  to  get  out  of  the  sight  of  those  forests  all 
living  with  birds  and  with  their  rivers  and  streams  so 
brimming  and  so  enchantingly  lovely  beneath  their  brood- 
ing boughs, — yes,  those  mighty  "  forests  of  America " 
which,  as  Mr.  John  Muir  declared  recently  in  his  noble 
threnody  upon  them  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  *  "  however 
slighted  by  man,  must  have  been  a  great  delight  to  God ; 
for  they  were  the  best  He  ever  planted." 

Besides  Cooper,  Irving,  Drake,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and 
Whittier,  the  American  forest-era  that  Harriet  Martineau 
*  August,  1807. 


35^  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

saw  in  all  its  glory  less  than  three-quarters  of  a  century 
ago,  produced  the  lambent  romance  of  Longfellow  and 
the  three  absolutely  original  and  matchless  American 
idealists,  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  and  Edgar  Poe. 

In  like  manner,  children  of  the  early  English  forest  were 
none  other  than  Chancer,  Spenser,  and  Shakespere.  The 
Italian  forest  nourished  Dante.  The  Greek  forest  brought 
forth  Homer.     The  Palestine  forest,  David. 

Often  have  there  been  trees  without  song-birds,  but  have 
there  often  been  song-birds  without  trees  ? 

The  genius  of  a  gifted  Vermont  sculptor  was  first 
manifested  by  his  making  a  seated  female  figure  in  snow 
at  a  street  intersection  of  his  forest-surrounded  native 
village.  If,  now,  his  townsmen  in  the  hour  of  his  first 
inspiration,  had  bought  some  white  granite  and  commis- 
sioned the  lad  to  hew  out  his  lovely  conception  and 
place  it  where  his  art  instinct  had  demanded  a  statue, 
would  not  the  work  have  conferred  a  special  distinction 
upon  the  little  place,  and  even  if  less  technically  per- 
fect than  his  later  achievements,  would  there  not  have 
been  upon  it  a  bloom  and  a  freshness  themselves  im- 
mortal ? 

Similarly,  during  his  long  and  eager  life,  it  never  oc- 
curred to  Austen  Brown  to  call  upon  the  latent  art-gifts  of 
the  Belmont  young  people  for  public  Belmont  adornment. 
He  had  set  an  aesthetic  example  in  two  lawns  bright  with 
geraniums  and  adorned  each  with  a  little  fountain.  One 
of  them  was  the  ample  surrounding  of  his  ample  home, 
and  the  other  a  little  oasis  amid  the  baldness  and  grime  of 
the  railroad  station.  The  example  bore  extensive  fruit  in 
the  well-kept  grounds  of  many  of  his  acquaintances  and  of 
his  employes.  In  the  newer  back  streets  where  dwelt  the 
latter,  fences  went  out  of  fashion,  and  the  residents  mowed 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  359 

the  grass  not  only  within  but  without  their  fence  limits, 
even  to  the  very  roadway  itself.  And  here  for  a  genera- 
tion Austen  Brown's  art-mission  rested  and  perhaps  would 
have  closed. 

But  several  years  before  his  death,  a  gentleman  visiting 
a  son  who  had  come  to  Belmont  to  live,  was  struck  with 
the  many  beauties  of  the  village,  and  with  the  contrasting 
shabbiness  of  its  central  green.  He  offered  to  head  a 
subscription  paper  with  a  thousand  dollars  for  putting  the 
green  in  order.  No  one  took  it  up.  All  waited  for  the 
village  magnate.  At  last,  when  he  got  quite  ready,  Austen 
Brown  fixed  a  sum  for  the  other  citizens  to  give,  and  if 
they  would,  he,  on  his  part,  promised  a  fountain  for  the 
park  adornment.  Belmont  was  enthusiastic  at  once.  The 
money  was  raised,  the  green  graded  and  turfed,  and  by 
another  year  a  large  bronze  woman  was  installed  in  the 
centre  of  a  water-basin,  into  which,  from  an  urn  under  her 
arm,  flowed  a  slender  rill. 

The  design  was  not  original  with  any  Belmont  or  other 
American  sculptor.  It  was  simply  chosen  from  the  cata- 
logue of  a  bronze  '*  art  "  factory  where  such  things  were 
turned  out  by  wholesale.  But  Belmont  thought  it  beauti- 
ful, and  was  proud  and  happy  over  it,  while  Austen  Brown's 
conscience  was  peaceful  and  self -approving.  He  had 
given  the  last  touch,  set  the  final  seal  to  his  many  benefac- 
tions to  Belmont — the  others  being  the  workshops  he  had 
founded,  the  population  he  had  attracted,  tlie  railroad 
prominence  and  prestige  he  had  bestowed,  the  skilled  gar- 
dening and  scientific  farming  he  had  inaugurated  in  it. 
His  town  was  the  idol  of  this  modern  captain  of  industry, 
and  he  gave  it  what  to  him  was  his  best. 

But  Belmont  was  equally  the  heart's  idol  of  the  bril- 
liant Mr.  Ashurst  who  had  left  it  so  many  years  before  j 


360  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


and  when  he  came  to  die,  he  bequeathed  ''  t«  the  children 
of  Behnont  "  the  whole  of  the  rocky  and  wooded  **  North 
Top,"  with  its  all-heavenly  view,  which  had  been  left  to 
him  by  his  father,  and  had  been  his  own  favorite  haunt 
when  a  boy.  The  only  condition  attached  to  the  priceless 
gift  was  that  the  hill  should  be  renamed  *'  Ashurst  Hill," 
and  should  never  be  "  improved  "  or  touched  by  the  hand 
of  man  in  any  way  whatever,  on  penalty  of  instant  rever- 
sion to  the  Ashurst  family. 

Which  of  the  two  was  the  greater  ccsthetic  and  moral 
])enefactor  to  Belmont  ?  And  why,  since  both  were  col- 
lege-bred men,  was  Mr.  Ashurst  so  broad  and  Austen 
Brown  so  narrow  ? 

Was  one  secret  of  the  contrast  in  the  women  of  their 
families  ?  Mr.  Ashurst's  sister,  and  also  his  wife,  were 
as  emancipated  and  enlightened  as  he,  and  through  life 
their  spirits,  like  two  wings,  uplifted  and  bore  aloft  his 
own. 

Not  only  he,  but  his  father  before  him,  had  lovingly 
taken  their  wives  and  daughters  with  them  to  whatever 
intellectual  heights  they  had  reached  themselves,  and  then 
these  illuminated  women  doubled  their  masculine  range  by 
the  feminine  one. 

But  Austen  Brown,  while  scaling  his  chosen  financial 
peaks,  had  left  Mrs.  Brown  in  the  narrow  financial  valley 
where  he  had  found  her.  Thus  he  was  a  typical  American 
capitalist,  which  is  to  be  a  motherless,  wifeless,  daugh- 
terless  Colossus — an  industrial  demiurge,  whose  head  is  in 
the  skies,  whose  stride  measures  the  continent,  who  "  weighs 
the  hills  in  a  balance"  and  considers  the  islands  "a 
very  little  thing" — while  at  the  end  of  a  longer  or  shorter 
tether,  the  woman  with  whom  he  stiirlerl  in  life,  declaring 
that  with  all  his  worldly  gooJ:j  he  uer  endowed,  enacts  a" 


NEW   YORK :    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  361 

his  feet  some  pigmy  role  of  society  or  charity,  or  sits  pas- 
sive like  some  hypnotized  Buddha  "  every  drop  of  whose 
blood"  (as  Emerson  so  terribly  but  so  unjustly  said  of 
Daniel  Webster)  "  has  eyes  that  seek  the  earth  /  " 

''  But  would  you  have  the  capitalists  take  their  wives  and 
daughters  into  their  offices  and  make  them  practical  part- 
ners in  all  their  business  enterprises  ?  "  some  one  may  ask 
me;  or  another  may  inquire  whether  I  would  "give 
woman  the  ballot  ?  " 

Neither.  Men  and  women  must  be  free.  They  must 
not  be  hampered  in  their  development  or  in  their  endeav- 
ors by  the  fears  or  the  ignorance  or  the  jealousies  of  each 
other.  But  I  would  have  the  capitalists  who  know  that  their 
own  wealth  and  power  are  the  results  of  their  corporate 
industrial  action  explain  to  womankind  that  its  great  in- 
dustrial function  of  housekeeping  is  purely  a  business  func- 
tion, and  should  be  organized  by  women  themselves  on 
business — that  is,  corporation — principles.  Both  sexes 
would  then  be  free.  Organizing  and  executive  man  on  the 
grand  scale  would  l)e  matched  by  organizing  and  executive 
woman  on  a  similar  scale.  She  would  grow  up  to  the  con- 
ception that  the  universe  is  large  and  joyous,  and  that  she 
must  do  and  must  inspire  large  and  joyous  things  there. 
Both  halves  of  humanity  would  be  prosperous  ;  both  would 
be  self-sustaining;  both  would  have  plenty  of  spare  time 
for  self-culture  and  recreation,  and  plenty  of  spare  money 
wherewith  to  encourage  Art  and  thus  make  existence 
beautiful.  The  wife  would  not  then,  as  Mrs.  Austen 
Brown  did  to  the  end  of  her  days,  feel  she  must  not  give 
away  or  subscribe  more  than  five  dollars  to  anything  with- 
out her  husband's  leave  :  American  towns  and  cities  would 
not  long  remain  so  pitiably  destitute  of  art  evidences  as 
thev  are  now;  New  York  itself  would  not  be,  as  a  recent 


362  NEW  YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

V 

Englishman  characterized  it,  '*  magnificent  and  hideous" 
— her  magnificence  being  the  work  of  her  capitalists,  her 
hideousness  the  negations  of  the  wives — of  the  cramped, 
of  the  undeveloped,  of  the  infantile-minded  wives  of  the 
same  capitalists. 

Where  the  feminine  spirit  is  free,  where  it  is  consulted, 
where  it  is  considered,  it  does  and  must  ''make  for 
beauty,"  because  beauty  is  the  native  feminine  atmos- 
phere. The  American  has  allowed  his  wife  to  make  of  her 
home  and  her  toilette  what  she  likes ;  and  the  whole  world 
bears  witness  that  there  are  no  homes  so  aesthetic  and  com- 
plete as  the  American  homes,  no  women  so  well  and  be- 
comingly dressed  as  the  American  women.  Where  beauty 
is  not,  therefore,  is  where  the  feminine  is  not  or  is  in 
abeyance.  The  external  and  the  political  city  of  New 
York  is  purely  a  masculine  product.  What  a  fathomless 
lie,  what  an  unforgivable  wrong,  in  the  famous  Protestant 
minister  who,  in  his  contempt  and  despite  toward  woman- 
hood, always  takes  care  to  designate  the  "  Tammany 
tiger" — the  most  absolutely  masculine  thing  in  this  Re- 
public save  the  ruthless  and  remorseless  Celibate  Hier- 
archy which  spiritually  nourishes  ii — as  ''  She  ! " 


CALVERT. 


CHAPTER   XLII. 

A     "business"     AMERICAN. 

After  being  a  widower — in  the  sub-world  a  very  gay 
widower — for  several  years,  Frank  Calvert  married,  chiefly 
for  her  money,  the  dashing  daughter  of  a  rich  capitalist  in 
western  New  York  whom  he  met  one  winter  when  she  was 
living,  like  himself,  in  a  fashionable  New  York  hotel. 

They  began  their  life  together  by  a  year  or  two  in  Eu- 
rope, travelling  everywhere,  even  to  Moscow,  Jerusalem, 
and  the  Nile,  and  seeing  everything.  Julia  being  dead, 
and  there  existing  no  occasion  to  play  the  usual  husband 
role  of  declining  to  be  influenced  for  fear  of  being  gov- 
erned, Calvert  had  at  last  admitted  to  himself  the  claims 
of  that  culture  which,  to  his  intense  disgust,  Julia  always 
so  pointedly  declared  was  her  particular  "  admiration." 
His  frequent  trips  abroad  had  given  him  much  French  and 
a  little  German,  and  his  week  or  two  on  the  steamers  four 
times  a  year  had  driven  him  to  reading  to  kill  the  time  ; 
also,  these  ocean  crossings,  by  bringing  him  more  or  less 
in  contact  with  men  and  women  of  breeding  and  edu- 
catio'i,  gradually  lost  him  the  various  inelegancies  of 
speech  and  manner  which  belonged  to  his  original  station. 
In  the  end,  his  really  strong  and  discriminating  mind 
found  great  pleasure  and  satisfaction  in  learning  and 
knowing  about  things  other  than  business,  politics,  thea- 
tres, and  horses.  After  the  hitherto  national  fashion,  he 
went    to    the   depths   of    nothing,   but   by  travel   and   the 


364  JVAPF    YORK:   A.  SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


perusal  of  the  lighter  current  literature,  he  had  become  at 
forty-five  precisely  one  of  those  ready  and  agreeable  Ameri- 
cans, panoplied  with  a  vast  amount  of  information  on  men 
and  countries  and  books  and  pictures,  to  whom  poor  Julia 
would  most  have  loved  to  talk. 

While  on  the  wedding  tour,  which  he  was  really  making 
educational,  Calvert's  plan  had  been  to  rent  some  desir- 
able house  on  returning  to  New  York,  live  as  nearly  like 
fashionable  people  as  he  knew  how,  take  any  opportunity 
of  getting  in  with  them  that  presented  itself,  and  end, 
finally,  by  being  one  of  them.  It  was  just  about  the  time 
that  a  rich  hotel-keeper's  widow  from  Boston  was  estab- 
lishing herself  in  the  gay  city  with  the  same  object;  and 
as  that  clever  woman  long  flourished  as  a  topmost  twig  of 
the  metropolitan  bough,  why  should  not  an  equally  clever 
man  have  done  the  same  thing  had  Fate  favored  the  pro- 
ject?    But  Fate  did  not  favor  it. 

Calvert's  was  a  youthful  firm,  with  financial  roots  as  yet 
not  very  strong  nor  very  deep.  During  his  long  absence, 
his  partners  became  intricated  with  a  certain  wide-branch- 
ing house  more  extensively  than  his  own  shrewdness  would 
have  approved.  Hardly  had  his  new  wife  shaken  out  of 
their  trunk-folds  her  Paris  dresses,  when  he  was  forced  to 
tell  her  one  evening,  after  the  theatre,  that  the  aforesaid 
house  was  about  to  fail,  and  that  his  own  would  inevitably 
have  to  follow  it. 

Financially,  the  Calverts  did  not  fall  very  far  nor  very 
hard.  Besides  himself,  Calvert  had  not  contributed  much 
to  his  firm,  and  his  millionnair-e  father-in-law,  appreciating 
his  ability,  at  once  offered  him  the  management  of  a  great 
publishing  house  which  he  owned  in  the  important  lake 
city  of  Buffalo,  and  which  issued  both  a  morning  and  a 
weekly  paper. 


NEW    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  365 

The  New  Yorker  promptly  accepted  the  exile,  resolved 
upon  a  success  that  would  enable  him  sooner  or  later  to 
put  an  end  to  it.  His  energy,  enterprise,  and  business 
training  swiftly  mastered  every  department  of  his  new  and 
untried  sphere,  and  having  to  do  with  books  and  with  jour- 
nalism, gave  a  wider  outlook  to  his  aims  and  efforts  than 
might  have  been  the  case  had  he  remained  in  the  densely 
material  atmosphere  of  New  York  financiering.  He  was 
still  preeminently  the  man  of  affairs,  but  with  now  a  broad 
margin  for  all  sorts  of  other  interests,  that  stamped  him  a 
personality  out  of  the  common.  He  made  so  great  a  busi- 
ness success  out  of  the  publishing  house,  that  in  a  very  few 
years  he  was  able  to  buy  out  his  father-in-law,  and  then 
the  sole  proprietorship  and  editing  of  its  two  newspapers 
passed  over  to  him  as  well. 

Frank  Calvert,  the  once  retail  dry-goods  clerk,  the 
owner  and  head  of  two  influential  journals  !  Who  could 
have  prophesied  it?  It  was  almost  enough  to  lure  Julia 
down  from  paradise,  in  case  she  were  there,  to  share  with 
him  the  prestige  of  a  position  that,  perhaps,  of  all  others, 
she  would  have  chosen  for  her  husband. 

With  Calvert's  fiery  Democratic  convictions,  here  was 
something  to  satisfy  the  flame  of  violent  ambition  kindled 
within  him  years  before  by  his  wife's  sarcasms,  but  which, 
covered  close  by  his  ignorance  and  by  the  importunate 
details  of  business,  had  never  had  free  air  and  chance  for 
life  until  now.  To  control  an  influential  daily  was  pre- 
cisely what  would  make  him  the  power  in  the  city,  in  the 
State,  perhaps  even  in  the  nation,  that  he  desired.  Cal- 
vert never  was  a  writer.  He  did  not  himself  attempt  the 
editorial  "we,"  but  he  selected  his  journalistic  corps  so 
well,  that  he  placed  his  Buffalo  News  and  Farmer's 
Weekly  in  the  front  rank  of  provincial  journalism. 


66  NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


In  measure  as  he  rose  to  be  the  head  of  an  immense  and 
growing  enterprise,  the  dictator  and  despot  of  two  success- 
ful newspapers,  with  his  wife's  and  his  father-in-law's 
money  behind  him,  and  his  own  rolling  up  before  him,  so 
did  Calvert  rise  to  be  also  a  personage  in  Buffalo  society 
and  a  force  among  men  throughout  the  western  section  of 
the  Empire  State.  He  was  the  president  of  one  leading 
club,  a  "  governor  "in  another,  the  founder  of  the  Buffalo 
Trotting  Club,  a  director  in  a  powerful  bank,  and  a  vice- 
president  of  the  Merchant's  Exchange.  Most  important, 
though  least  observed  of  all,  he  was  so  active  in  city  and 
county  politics,  that  in  1877  he  was  elected  to  the  Demo- 
cratic State  Committee,  and  soon  became  one  of  its 
strongest  and  most  influential  members. 
■  Meantime,  the  marriage  whirh  had  so  generously  helped 
him  to  wealth  and  position  had  proved  most  unhappy. 
His  wife  was  a  woman  of  so  violent  a  temper,  that,  on 
looking  back,  Julia  seemed  quite  an  angel  in  comparison. 
Like  so  many  mistaken  widowers,  one  of  Calvert's  motives 
in  marrying  again  had  been  to  give  his  little  girl  a  home. 
Julia  had  begged  that  Clara  should  not  be  sent  to  board- 
ing-school, but  from  the  time  of  her  mother's  death,  Clara 
had  been  sent  to  boarding-school,  because  no  home  of 
either  aunt  or  grandmother  was  available  for  her.  Cal- 
vert's warm  heart  yearned  over  his  child,  and  he  wanted 
her  with  him. 

But  a  wife  is  and  must  be  closer  than  a  child,  and  the 
woman  that  poor  Calvert  had  taken  to  his  breast  had  the 
traditional  step-mother's  dislike  and  antagonism  to  her 
predecessor's  offspring.  She  had  no  children  of  her  own, 
and  she  was  jealous  of  the  half-orphan's  place  in  her 
father's  affections.  The  wife  wanted  her  husband  all  and 
wholly  to  herself.    Consequently,  she  contrived  that  Clara 


.     NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  2,(i1 

should  still  be  kept  in  Xew  York  at  school,  and  that  even 
much  of  her  summer  vacations  should  be  passed  with  her 
grandmamma  Dexter  and  her  aunts  Fanny  and  Josephine. 
What  these  ladies  and  the  fifteen-hundred-dollar  Fifth 
Avenue  boarding-school  did  for  the  girl  may  be  inferred 
from  the  letters  at  sixteen  to  an  intimate  friend,  \vritten 
in  a  delicate,  flowing,  perfectly  formed  hand,  and  accu- 
rately spelled,  but  punctuated  and  artless  as  the  following  : 

New  York,  May  30,  1871. 
Dearest  Belle, 

Your  letter  has  just  been  sent  to  me  from  school.  I  am  staying 
with  my  mother  at  224  Fifth  Avenue  on  account  of  the  dentist.  I 
think  it  simply  absurd  for  me  to  go  back  to  school  for  three  weeks, 
however  I  had  all  my  clothes  put  in  working  order  and  feel  quite 
relieved,  one  of  my  summer  suits  is  too  sweet  for  anything^,  a  blue 
silk  underdress  and  waist  and  light  gray  overskirt  and  a  kind  of 
jacket,  it  is  too  stylish  for  anything. 

There  is  just  the  nicest  fellow  possible  here  a  graduate  of  old 
Harvard,  the  most  beautiful  teeth  I  ever  saw  and  so  stylish,  he 
and  his  friend  have  a  suite  of  rooms  next  to  me  beautifully  furnished 
he  plays  the  guitar  and  sings  delightfully,  every  evening  I  go  in 
his  room  and  we  have  a  concert,  I  like  him  immensely,  there  are 
a  multitude  of  nice  fellows  here  almost  every  evening  and  I  am 
just  about  old  enough  now  to  enjoy  their  society  Belle  I  never 
expected  I  would  be  liked  so  much  by  the  males  but  I  am  a  real 
favorite,  do  not  think  me  egotistical,  I  suppose  perhaps  I  can 
talk  well,  and  am  full  of  life  and  have  just  a  few  personal  attrac- 
tions, you  would  not  know  me,  I  am  so  changed,  taller  somewhat 
on  the  form  and  eyes  that  can  talk  a  little,  any  way  I  have  all  the 
fun  I  can  possibly  desire  that  is  saying  a  good  deal  for  me,  because 
like  my  own  mother  I  am  fond  of  admiration,  but  enough  of  / 
You  will  think  I  am  no  longer  C'aire  but  a  disagreeable  vain  girl 
such  however  is  not  the  case,  I  love  you  Blue-bell  just  the 
same  and  am  just  the  old  self  of  bygone  years  wait  till  I  have  a 
house  won't  you  spend  long  months  with  me.  I  had  a  long  letter 
from   Hally  Brown  yesterday     she  is  too  sweet  to  live     she  writes 


368  NEW    YORK.    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

me  the  loveliest  letters  and  so  often  I  am  going  to  see  her  this 
summer  her  brother  is  so  nice.  Belle  1  have  been  to  a  champagne 
\nnch, pdte  de  foie  gras  et  and  I  am  just  used  up.      Write  soon  and 

believe  me  with  all  my  heart's  love 

Your  own 

Claire. 

New  YoKYi,  June  9,  1871, 
My  Dearest  Belle 

Your  ever  welcome  letter  was  received  yesterday  morning,  and  you 
see  as  usual  I  hasten  to  answer  it.  You  surprise  me  very  much 
when  you  speak  of  my  going  into  a  young  gentleman's  room  ol 
course  my  mother  would  be  present — I  flatter  myself  I  understand 
the  rules  of  propriety  quite  well  enough  not  to  commit  a  breach, 
besides  one's  reputation  in  New  York  is  as  dear  to  them  as  the 
breath  they  draw  for  it  is  hard  to  find  a  young  girl  perfectly  right — 
What  a  nice  treat  darling  you  are  to  have  this  summer  I  am 
so  glad  I  hope  you  will  enjoy  every  moment.  I  have  just  finished 
a  long  letter  to  a  friend  of  mine  who  was  married  four  weeks  ago. 
She  is  lovely  I  expect  her  over  to  see  me  every  few  days,  she 
married  a  very  wealthy  fellow,  and  they  live  in  New  Jersey — Never 
fear  Belle  dear  I  shall  marry  well,  although  never  perhaps  the 
man  I  desire  to,  you  know  we  never  marry  our  idol — and  I  will 
have  a  lovely  house  and  you  shall  make  me  such  lovely  lo)ig  visits — 
this  all  I  hope  yet  how  little  we  know  our  future.  But  I  must  go  to 
the  dentist's  so  I  must  close  with  all  my  heart's  love  I  am  darling 
Yours  ever  so  truly 

Claire. 

Whatever  its  surface  ignorance,  so  sweet  a  nature  and 
so  warm  and  generous  a  heart  as  this  could  not  be  spoiled 
even  by  the  examples  of  a  Mrs.  Dexter  and  a  Fanny  Howe  ; 
and  in  response  to  the  ardor  that  went  out  to  him  also, 
the  one  thing  that  Frank  Calvert  deeply  and  passionately 
loved,  was  his  only  child.  Had  his  second  wife  given  him 
a  home  of  love  within  which  his  Clara  was  embraced,  he 
would  have  lavished  himself  upon  her,  and  her  alone,  for 
gratitude,  if  for  nothing  else,     As  it  was,  after  waiting  as 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  3^9 

long  as  he  cared  for  the  legitimate  happiness  which  did 
not  come,  Calvert  consoled  himself  for  the  disappoint- 
ments of  the  present  as  he  had  done  for  those  of  the  past. 
Even  in  Julia's  day  he  had  gone  over  to  that  large  major- 
ity of  his  sex  who  laugh  to  themselves  at  the  idea  of  "  one 
woman  being  enough  for  one  man,"  and  his  second  dis- 
cordant union  was  in  his  eyes  justification  enough  for 
almost  any  scandal. 

The  second  Mrs.  Calvert,  however,  was  rich  in  her  own 
right.  Consequently  she  was  not  obliged  to  tolerate  find- 
ing herself  one  of  two  or  more,  as  are  so  many  wives  who 
are  ''supported"  by  their  husbands.  His  own  fortune 
once  secured,  Calvert  rather  counted  on  this,  and  so 
little  concealed  his  preferences,  that  after  ten  or  twelve 
years  of  dispute  and  storm,  to  his  relief  and  pleasure,  the 
exasperated  woman  procured  a  divorce. 

Calvert  was  now  free  to  make  himself  a  home  such  as  he 
liked,  and  he  did  so.  For  himself  and  his  Clara  he  fur- 
nished a  spacious  and  charming  house,  and  in  it  they  lived 
romantically  eji  camarade  together,  riding,  driving,  en- 
tertaining, going  to  places  of  amusement,  keeping  open 
house  for  all  Clara's  girl  friends  and  for  all  Calvert's 
political  and  business  ones  :  no  end  of  men  about,  of  all 
ages,  smoking  and  drinking  as  freely  as  in  bachelors'  halls. 
And  "  Liberty  Hall  "  in  fact  it  was,  with  a  free-handed 
connoisseur  in  wines,  in  cuisine,  in  pictures,  in  draperies, 
in  dress,  for  its  master ;  and  for  its  mistress,  a  cordial  and 
exquisitely-costumed  young  lady,  whose  pretty  and  expres- 
sive face  was  not  too  much  discounted  by  a  figure  some- 
what short  and  stout,  who  had  inherited  her  mother's 
fluent  and  interesting  speech,  who  even  ventured  a  little 
into  verse  and  dramatic  criticism  for  her  father's  paper, 
and  who,  withal,  was  certain  to  be  some  day  an  heiress. 


370  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

Father  and  daughter  travelled  together,  north,  south, 
east  and  west,  as  the  former  could  spare  a  week  or  a 
month  from  his  engagements,  and  he  was  always  promis- 
ing himself  a  longer  vacation,  when  he  should  enjoy  with 
his  Clara  the  Europe  he  knew  and  loved  so  well ;  and  alas, 
every  few  days  he  drove,  besides,  to  the  tree-embowered 
suburban  cottage  he  had  given  to  the  handsome  de'classee 
on  whose  account  his  wife  had  finally  divorced  him. 

These  genial,  energetic,  high-strung  Calverts, — were  they 
happy  in  their  American  whirl  of  enterprise,  excitement, 
and  change?     Clara  was  now  twenty-eight,  and  though 

"  In  her  heart's  most  secret  cell 
Had  been  innumerable  lodgers," 

its  **  idol  "  had  not  yet  come  to  stay.  Moreover,  her 
social  position  in  Buffalo  was  not  perfectly  satisfactory. 
Her  father's  free  way  of  living  reflected  disadvantageously 
upon  her.  The  leading  people  did  not  care  to  have  their 
daughters  intimate  with  her.  Naturally,  therefore,  she  was 
not  at  rest ;  and  as  for  him,  is  a  sensitive  and  enlight- 
ened man  ever  at  rest,  ever  at  peace  and  unity  with  him- 
self, who  is  striking  that  most  hideous  of  all  discords  in 
the  harmony  of  the  universe, — who  is  wronging  a  woman  ? 
Calvert  was  sedulous  that  the  newspapers  under  his  con- 
trol should  be  *' clean  "  and  "high-toned."  Could  he 
know  the  right  so  well  and  yet  practise  the  wrong  and  be 
happy?  Ah,  no  1  In  the  heart  of  any  such  man,  let  the 
poison  tree  thrust  in  secret  as  deep,  and  to  outward  seem- 
ing flaunt  as  high  and  bravely  as  it  will,  the  worm  of  remorse 
is  ever  gnawing  at  its  roots.  However  gay  or  brilliant  the 
life  before  the  world,  "  a  deep  river  of  sadness,"  as 
George  Eliot  admitted  about  her  own  inexcusable  second 
marriage,  '*  runs  below  it  all."- 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  371 

All  the  same,  Calvert  was  the  envy  of  many  men  of  his 
own  age  and  the  ideal  of  all  the  youths  to  whom  he  extended 
his  frank  hospitality.  He  gave  liberally  to  the  needy,  to 
charities,  and  to  religion;  paid  for  an  expensive  pew  for 
his  daughter  in  the  fashionable  Episcopal  church  and 
subscribed  handsomely  to  the  clergyman's  salary, — though 
why  Christian  ministers  should  let  themselves  be  partially 
supported  by  the  flagrant  adherents  of  Satan,  they  may  be 
able  to  explain  to  their  Master  in  a  less  complicated 
world  than  this. 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

A  DEMOCRATIC   LEADER^ 

Why  was  Frank  Calvert  a  Democrat? — for  in  those 
days  the  great  party  as  founded  by  Thomas  Jefferson  was 
still  in  existence. 

In  my  youth  a  brilliant  Democrat  once  said  in  my  hear- 
ing: "The  Democratic  Party  is  the  party  of  freedom; 
consequently  it  is  the  party  of  the  least  educated  and  of 
the  most  educated." 

The  political  conviction  of  Jefferson  was  that  the  best 
government  is  that  which  governs  least,  and  consequently 
the  great  party  which  he  founded  held  that  the  govern- 
ment must  be  intrusted  with  as  few  functions  as  possible. 
The  terms  of  its  executive  officers  must  be  short;  they 
must  be  chosen  by  the  people  from  the  body  of  the  people ; 
their  salaries  must  be  small ;  they  must  not  indulge  in 
pomp  and  pageantry ;  the  people  themselves  must  be  every- 
thing, and  individual  energy  and  effort  must  initiate  and 
carry  out  whatever  industrial  enterprises  were  needed  for 
the  public  welfare. 

The  four  great  doctrines  of  Local  Self-Government,  Un- 
fettered Commerce,  Hard  Money,  a  Strict  Interpretation 
of  the  Federal  Constitution,  were  the  political  bulwarks 
behind  which  many  high  typical  Americans,  trained  and 
stainless  and  eagle-eyed  men,  intrenched  themselves  as 
"  Democrats."  They  were  leaders  in  the  Democratic 
Party,  and  they  stood  for  the  principles  of  Jefferson  be- 


N£IV    YORK .    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  373 

cause  they  honestly  believed  these  involved,  and  more 
nearly  than  any  others  would  promote,  "  the  greatest  hap- 
piness of  the  greatest  number.'' 

But  why,  when  so  splendid  were  the  principles  and 
when  so  true  and  noble  were  many  leaders  of  the  Demo- 
cratic Party,  did  its  rank  and  file  include  that  host  of 
purveyors  to  and  devotees  of  ignorance,  oppression,  vice, 
cruelty  and  crime  which  for  so  many  disgraceful  years 
made  the  orj.anization  a  by-word  to  Republican  Amer- 
icans? 

Why  were  sports,  saloon-keepers,  wife-beaters,  drunk- 
ards, gamblers,  profligates — why  were  the  haters  and  op- 
posers  of  education,  the  believers  in  priestly  authority 
and  lay  submission,  the  despisers  of  the  aspirations  of 
women,  almost  invariably  of  the  party  which  owed  its 
existence  to  the  chief  author  of  Americanism  ?  "  All 
Democrats  are  not  horse-thieves,''  said  Horace  Greeley, 
"  but  all  horse-thieves  are  Democrats." 

The  Magna  Charta  of  Americanism — that  "  all  men  are 
created  equal  and  have  equal  rights  to  life,  liberty  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness" — still  flames  in  our  national  sky 
where  its  Immortal  Scribe  first  placed  it;  but  for  two  ge*:- 
erations  the  majority  of  the  party  which  boasted  itself  his 
child  had  ignored  or  denied  its  underlying  principle. 

How  did  such  an  association  of  the  generous  and  the 
base,  of  the  free  and  the  tyrannical,  of  the  pure  and  the 
corrupt,  come  about? 

Was  it  not  because  the  Democratic  Party,  being  the 
pledged  upholders  of  Jefferson's  favorite  doctrine,  that 
the  best  government  is  that  which  least  limits  the  self- 
direction  and  free  activity  of  the  individual,  was  by  that 
very  fact  the  pledged  party  of  Let- Alone?  Oppressors 
and  spoilers  of  every  type  require  a  large  margin  of  lib- 


374  A'^W^    YORK':   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

erty  and  let-alone  wherein,  unchecked,  they  may  use  their 
fellow-creatures  for  their  own  ends,  and  in  the  United 
States  that  margin  was  found  in  the  boundless  platform 
of  Jefferson. 

It  was  for  no  other  reason  that  Southern  slave-owners 
became  so  unanimously  Democratic.  All  they  asked,  as 
even  they  themselves  expressed  it,  was  to  be  "  let  alone  " 
in  their  management  of  the  negro  man  for  their  profit 
and  of  the  negro  woman  for  their  profit  and  their  pleasure 
both. 

Mormons,  Roman  Catholics  and  High-Church  Episco- 
palians also  were,  and  are,  mostly  Democrats,  and  for  the 
same  necessity  for  large  independence  for  one's  self  when 
one  would  lord  it  over  one's  fellows.  As  organizations, 
these  hierarchies,  all  more  or  less  to  their  own  advantage, 
exploit  humanity  and  undermine  its  self-reliance  and  self- 
respect  by  making  its  eternal  salvation  depend  upon  mys- 
terious priesthoods  of  mysterious  powers.  The  weaker 
sex  especially  do  they  use  for  their  own  hierarchical  pur- 
poses. Toward  women,  Mormons,  Romanists  and 
"  Churchmen  "  are  despots — autocrats — a  law  unto  them- 
selves; ruling  their  feminine  contingent  through  councils, 
conventions  and  vestries  without  representative  conference 
or  consultation  with  the  ruled,  and  expecting  and  accept- 
ing the  most  tremendous  services  and  sacrifices  with 
scanty  recognition  or  none  at  all.  The  Mormon  and  the 
Roman  creeds,  in  fact,  like  the  Mohammedan,  erected 
and  still  maintain  themselves  on  the  ruins  of  the  feminine 
intelligence  and  self-respect,  nor  seems  the  Episcopal 
Church  averse  to  a  similar  role.  So  blighted  and  para- 
lyzed down  to  narrowness  and  slavishness  is  this  fashion- 
able church  by  the  bishops  and  priests  of  its  so-claimed 
"  apostolic  succession — "  little  popes  in  their  dioceses  and 


XEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHOXIC  STUDY. 


375 


parishes  as  the  majority  of  them  are — that  I  know  of  no 
one  of  the  movements  for  the  enlarging  and  uplifting  of 
women  whose  origin  in  the  United  States  can  be  traced 
to  its  haughty  and  exclusive  communion,  nor  can  any  be 
credited  to  the  Democratic  Party. 

The  former  metropolis  of  New  York,  now  the  Borough 
of  Manhattan  of  New  York,  is  the  overwhelming  Amer- 
ican stronghold  at  once  of  Episcopacy  and  of  Democracy — 
and  how  are  women  treated  there?  The  answer  is  that 
in  proportion  there  is  more  dishonor  and  ruin  planned  and 
carried  out  against  them  by  the  "  pleasure  classes  " — in 
proportion  there  is  more  abuse,  cursing,  starvation,  beat- 
ing and  killing  against  them  by  the  working  classes  than 
obtains  in  any  other  city  of  the  Union.  For  many  years 
the  Episcopal  business  men  and  the  Catholic  working- 
men  of  the  former  New  York  upheld  the  Party  one  of 
whose  determined  cries  is:  "No  sumptuary  laws! 
Hands  off  from  our  indulgences — let  suffer  from  them 
who  will!"  In  fact,  it  was  the  Catholic  Irishman  who 
introduced  wife-beating  into  this  country,  and  the  country, 
instead  of  beating  him  in  return  and  so  stopping  the 
practice  in  its  inception,  allowed  him  practical  impunity  in 
his  brutality  toward  womanhood,  until  now,  on  the 
principle  that  "evil  communications  corrupt  good  man- 
ners," the  country  has  itself  become  more  or  less  bru- 
talized. 

Birds  of  a  feather  flock  together.  Where  women  were 
concerned,  Frank  Calvert  was  practically  a  lawless  man. 
True,  it  was  lawlessness  tempered  by  much  generosity, 
by  much  tenderness,  by  the  chivalry  and  respect  for 
womanhood  which  pervaded  the  American  atmosphere 
when  he  was  young,  and  of  which  reminiscences  yet  lin- 
gered about  him.     But  still,  as  far  as  he  cared  to  go  in 


370  ^'^ I'i''    YORK :  A    S YAIPH ONI C   i>l  oVY. 


gratifying  his  impulses,  he  wanted  to  go  without  hin- 
drance or  reproach.  He  regarded  his  private  life  as  '  no 
one's  business  "  but  his  own,  and  the  liberty  he  loved  and 
took  for  himself  he  consistently  extended  to  other  men. 

Self-deceived,  however,  like  most  of  us,  Calvert  never 
suspected  that  he  was  so  morally  at  home  in  the  Demo- 
cratic Party  because  of  its  high  pagan  disregard  of  the 
liberty,  of  the  happiness,  of  the  more  than  life  of  the 
opposite  sex.  He  believed  he  belonged  to  it  because  of 
its  noble  stand  for  the  best  happiness  of  his  own.  His 
mercantile  interests  had  for  years  been  those  of  the  im- 
porter, therefore  he  was  naturally  a  low-tariff  man.  His 
thorough  business  training,  again,  had  made  him  proof 
against  all  departures  from  the  gold  basis  of  the  currency ; 
while  his  sympathy  for  the  South  in  the  agonizing  and 
incalculable  sufferings  of  her  post-bellum  or  "  carpet-bag  " 
era,  decided  him  that  that  unhappy  section  should  aad 
must  have  back  again  its  "  inalienable  "  American  right 
of  Local  Self-Government.  For  the  rest,  he  hated  Re- 
publicanism and  wanted  to  oust  it.  "  Damned  hypocrisy 
and  cheating,"  as  he  characterized  it  to  his  friends. 
"  What  they  want  is  to  hold  on  to  the  power  and  to  fill  the 
offices  and  their  own  pockets  !  That's  what  their  '  love 
of  the  Union  '  and  '  devotion  to  the  flag '  that  they  are 
always  flaunting  in  our  faces  and  thrusting  down  our 
throats  amount  to.  That  is  the  inspiration,  the  true  in- 
wardness, of  this  *  Grand  Old  Party  of  high  moral  ideas ' 
— nothing  more,   under  God's  heaven." 

Calvert,  moreover,  as  I  have  said,  loved  the  State  and 
city  of  New  York  with  a  true  New  Yorker's  jealous  love 
and  wished  them  to  be  on  top.  And,  finally,  his  own 
energy  was  something  tremendous.  He  panted  for  a  wide 
field,  a  national  field,  an  international  field  for  its  exer- 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  377 

• 
cise.  He  felt  it  in  him  to  rise  far  above  both  his  present 
and  his  former  associates,  and  he  was  consumed  with  the 
desire  so  to  rise.  Like  nearly  every  man  and  every  woman 
of  exceptional  force  and  talent,  he  burned  to  "  show  what 
he  could  do."  That  terrific  Americanism  of  being  "  as 
good  as  anybody "  boiled  in  his  veins.  He  would  be 
among  his  peers — yes,  even  among  the  "  great "  of  the 
land! 


CHAPTER   XLIV. 

SOMETHING    MEN    HATE. 

If  there  be  truth  in  the  Bible,  the  relation  of  man  to 
woman  is  the  bottom  relation — that  whereby  humanity 
images  and  expresses  the  Divine  and  through  which  also 
it  is  to  climb  ever  nearer  to  the  Divine. 

This  the  Enemy  of  the  Divine  perceived  so  clearly  that 
at  the  outset  of  human  history  he  brought  about,  and  has 
ever  since  maintained,  a  misunderstanding,  nay,  an  en- 
mity between  man  and  woman  which,  in  spite  of  the  ef- 
fort of  early  Christianity  against  it,  substantially  rules  the 
world  unto  this  hour. 

Where  one  husband  is  betrayed  by  a  wife  as  David 
Howe  was  betrayed  by  Fanny,  probably  ten  wives  are 
betrayed  by  their  husbands ;  add  to  this  the  almost  universal 
desecration  of  the  sex-relation  by  unmarried  men — a  sac- 
rilege that  Tolstoi  rightly  branded  as  the  betrayal  by  hus- 
bands of  their  wives  "  years  before  they  even  make  their 
acquaintance,"  and  we  need  seek  no  farther  why  the 
human  race  has  not  yet  realized  its  ideals — is  in  fact  so 
infinitely  below  them. 

For  the  source  of  human  life  itself  is  here,  and  if  the 
source  be  poisoned  how  shall  the  life  emanating  from  the 
source  be  otherwise?  It  can  not  be  otherwise,  and  from 
thence  alone  crumble  down  the  descending  abysses  of  all 
our  woes;  our  slow-spreading,  deep-eating  diseases;  our 
ugliness;  our  physical  and  mental  feebleness  whose  ulti- 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


379 


mate  deposit  is  pauperism ;  our  "  dying  nations  "  of  suf- 
fering and  abject  masses  ruled  by  despots  and  corruption- 
ists  for  their  own  selfish  ends;  and  final,  deepest  depth  of 
all,  our  barbarous  and  savage  races  so  spiritually  dead 
that  they  are  but  little  higher  than  the  animals  and  have 
literally  no  word  for  "  love " — for  any  kind  of  love, 
not  even  maternal   love — in  their  languages. 

Jesus  Christ  declared  as  the  purpose  of  his  ministry  to 
"  give  deliverance  " — to  make  the  race  "  free  ";  but  this  is 
possible  only  through  personal  obedience  to  the  one  con- 
dition of  freedom — the  wedded  fidelity  of  one  man  to  one 
woman,  and  of  one  woman  to  one  man. 

How  can  the  womanhood  of  a  country  give  birth  to  and 
train  up  the  self-respecting,  self-governing  and  spirited 
manhood  without  which  republican  institutions  are  impos- 
sible, unless  itself  is  respected,  self-respecting  and  free 
within  its  own  orbit  of  being? 

How  can  men  instruct  and  guide  the  state  as  Frank 
Calvert  through  his  newspapers  was  now  daring  to  do, 
when  they  themselves  are  breakers  of  the  foundation  law  ? 

In  the  time  of  Jesus,  organized  society  was  literally  a 
quagmire  of  profligacy,   slavery  and  cruelty. 

"  On  that  hard  pagan  world 
Disgust  and  loathing  fell. 
Deep  weariness  and  sated  lust 
Made  human  life  a  hell  ; — " 

and  He,  the  one  sun-ray  of  supreme  wisdom,  gentleness, 
purity  and  power  that  it  had  ever  known — after  a  brief 
sojourn,  and  far  briefer  teaching,  was  about  to  leave  it. 
He  consoled  his  dismayed  and  sorrowing  disciples  by 
assuring  them  that  in  his  stead  He  would  send  them  the 
"  Spirit  of  Truth,"  Who  should  "  guide  them  into  all  truth  " 


380  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

and  "  bring  to  their  remembrance  all  the  things  that  He 
had  told  them  " — as  the  result  of  this  knowledge  having 
previously  declared:  "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  shall  make  you  free'' 

The  "  Spirit "  came  indeed,  and  by  that  Spirit  the  child- 
ish disciples  of  Jesus  were  transformed  into  his  bold 
apostles;  but  in  their  first  and  only  united  apostolic  pro- 
nunciamento  what  did  they  impose  upon  their  Gentile  con- 
verts as  the  sine  qua  non  of  the  Christian  life? 

Did  they  reiterate  the  Ten  Commandments  or  catalogue 
the  virtues?  Like  the  mediaeval  Catholics,  did  they  tell 
men  and  women  not  to  eat  meat  on  Friday,  or  like  the 
latter-day  Protestants,  not  to  drink  anything  fermented  ? 

Nay.  Temperance  was  not  mentioned.  Honesty  was 
not  mentioned.  Kindness  was  not  mentioned.  Only  one 
virtue   was   mentioned — the   virtue   of   Chastity ! 

"  It  seemeth  good  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  to  us,  that  we 
lay  upon  you  no  greater  burden  than  these  necessary 
things — that  ye  abstain  from  pollutions  of  idols  and  from 
pollutions  between  the  sexes,  and  from  things  strangled 
and  from  blood."  *  And  if  we  inquire  why  the  two  lat- 
ter, the  answer  is  that  possibly  the  eating  of  blood  was 
forbidden  throughout  the  Bible  because  disease  germs 
haunt  the  blood  and  also  because  no  diet  so  inflames  the 
circulation,  and  therefore  so  militates  against  chastity,  as 
this  diet. 

Every  baptized  Christian,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile  con- 
vert, was  now  obliged  to  promise  and  to  carry  out  chas- 
tity. The  purity  and  mutual  respect  of  the  sexes  was 
thus  the  adamantine  floor  commanded  by  Divine  Wisdom 
to  be  laid  down  that  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  might  be 
built  up ;  and  from  that  day  to  this  personal  and  political 
freedom   have    come  to,   and   have   remaind  with   races, 

*  Acts  XV.,  vs.  20,  28,  29. 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  381 

nations  and  communities  in  proportion  to  the  number  of 
those  accepting  this  command  of  "  the  Holy  Ghost — the 
Comforter." 

But  in  all  these  nineteen  hundred  years  how  many  men 
have  accepted  this  basic  teaching  of  the  Holy  Ghost? 
How  many  accept  it  to-day?  Certainly  Calvert  did  not, 
nor,  indeed,  did  he  at  all  trouble  himself  "  whether  there 
be  any  Holy  Ghost  or  no."  The  whole  subject  of  relig- 
ion was  to  him,  as  to  such  hosts  of  American  men,  as 
if  it  were  not  in  the  universe. 

In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  Jesus  declared  that  "  the 
pure  in  heart  shall  see  God."  Conversely,  it  should  and 
does  follow,  that  those  who  are  ywt  "pure"  do  not  and 
can  not  "  see  God,"  or  the  things  of  God.  Countless 
gifted  and  in  their  day  and  generation  triumphant  men 
like  Calvert,  men  of  experience  and  power,  have  flattered 
themselves  that  they  can  profane  womanhood  and  their 
own  manhood  and  at  the  same  time  can  "  think  clear  and 
see  straight  "  regarding  any  given  problem  of  public  con- 
cern. But  they  cannot,  and  they  do  not.  Constantly 
their  statesmanship  decides  wrong,  and  posterity  has  to 
pay  the  penalty.  These  be  the  false  guides,  the  false 
prophets,  the  men  who  lead  a  country  down  and  not  up, 
whose  ideal  is  a  "  strong "  government  administered  by 
a  "  strong  "  man,  whose  heroes  are  the  Julius  Caesars  and 
Napoleons  and  Bismarcks — whose  evangelists  the  Carlyles 
and  Kiplings — of  the  race ;  and  may  our  Father  in  Heaven 
in  His  mercy  for  ever  deliver  the  noble  American  man- 
hood from  such  heroes  and  from  such  ideals ! 


CHAPTER   XLV. 


AN    AMERICAN    EDITOR 


The  compact  of  American  journalism  with  the  Father 
of  Lies  has  long  been  the  great  bewildering  influence  of 
the  American  people.  The  coat  of  arms  of  the  typical, 
of  the  representative  editor  of  this  land  should  be  the 
proverbial  pedestal  of  the  proverbial  rooster,  and  his  crest 
should  be  the  rooster  himself — since  to  laud  to  the  skies 
the  editor's  own  town.  State,  party  and  personal  opinions, 
and  to  cry  down  every  other,  no  matter  what  cause  may 
be  injured  or  what  individual  sacrificed,  is  his  first,  last, 
middle  duty  to — ^his  country? — or  to  his  readers?  Nay, 
but  to  his  private  fortune  and  his  pride;  for  money  and 
power  are  all  that  he  runs  his  paper  for. 

Such  an  editor  was  Frank  Calvert.  He  was  exultant 
when  he  was  made  a  member  of  the  New  York  Demo- 
cratic State  Co:nmittee.  He  had  worked  for  the  position 
— for  the  successful  capitalist  and  journalist  that  he  had 
now  become  could  command  agencies  which  would  help 
him  to  realize  a  passionate  wish  of  many  years,  and  one 
with  which  his  swift-advancing  fortune  was  entwining 
a  personal  ambition  as  well — the  restoration  of  the  Demo- 
cratic Party  to  national  power,  with  the  great  State  of 
New  York  in  the  van  of  the  movement  and  himself  in 
the  van  of  the  great  State  of  New  York. 

"  A  worker  first ;  a  power  last,"  was  his  motive-thought, 
as  possible  visions  of  himself  as  an  "Honorable"  floated 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  2>^t^ 

before  his  mental  vision.  But  no  mere  member  of  Con- 
gress. That,  as  he  would  have  said  himself,  was  "  too 
small  potatoes"  for  him  I  A  United  States  Senator,  or 
a  magnate  of  the  Cabinet — possibly  even  the  minister  to 
England  or  to  France;  such  was  his  aspiration,  and  in 
American  politics  many  stranger  things  had  happened. 

Through  its  namesake  metropolis  the  State  of  New 
York  is  numerically  a  Democratic  State ;  through  the 
same  metropolis  it  is  also  the  Empire  State  of  the  Union — 
the  most  populous,  the  richest,  the  most  forceful,  the 
great  commercial  heart  which  sends  its  mighty  trade- 
currents  all  over  the  country,  and  gathers  to  itself  again 
the  aggregate  of  that  country's  million  rills  of  produc- 
tion. That  New  York  is  by  right  the  political  and  every 
other  centre  of  the  Republic — its  vital  axis — is  the  in- 
born, burnt-in  conviction  of  all  New  York  journalists 
and  citizens,  and  one  which  Calvert  shared  to  the  full  both 
as  man  and  as  editor.  If  the  ^Calvert  will  and  ambition 
could  have  any  voice  in  the  matter,  New  York  must  and 
should  assert  herself.  His  mighty  adopted  State  should 
dictate   policies   and  nominate  presidents. 

Clearly,  something  was  the  matter  with  the  supreme 
commonwealth.  In  campaign  after  campaign  the  presi- 
dential cup  had  seemed  predestined  to  her  lips,  only  to 
be  dashed  inscrutably  away.  The  chivalrous  McClellan, 
the  trusted  Seymour,  the  philanthropic  Greeley,  the  astute 
Tilden,  the  sterling  Hancock  were  nearly  all  residents  of 
the  State  at  the  time  of  their  respective  nominations.  In 
succession  New  York  had  striven  for  them  as  the  na- 
tional standard-bearers  of  the  Democratic  Party.  Each 
one  in  turn  had  seemed  as  though  he  must  win,  so  strong 
was  his  personality,  so  seemingly  impregnable  the  Jeffer- 
sonian  principles  he  had  stood  for — yet  each  had  failed. 


384  ^^^    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"  By  the  Lord  Jehovah !  "  shouted  the  profane  Calvert, 
as  he  sat  with  his  fellow-workers  at  the  Democratic  head- 
quarters in  Buffalo,  smoking  and  drinking  and  swearing 
as  the  returns  came  in  declaring  Hancock  defeated,  "  our 
men  are  too  good !  They  are  too  much  above  the  popular 
level,  too  high-toned,  brilliant,  and  conspicuous  to  suc- 
ceed. We  must  do  as  the  Dernocratic  Party  did  before 
the  war  and  as  the  Republican  Party  has  in  their  last  two 
nominations — take  an  average  man  if  we  want  to  hit  the 
average  voter." 

"  Ye-e-s,"  drawled  reflectively  a  rich  old  down-easter 
who  had  never  changed  his  native  dialect,  "  and  t'aint 
only  that  nuther.  We  want  a  noo  man.  The  party  needs 
noo  blood.  Them  old  names  in  the  east  of  the  State,  old 
party  stand-bys,  Seymour  and  Tilden  and  the  rest  on  'em, 
don't  do  to  kunjur  with  any  longer.  We've  got  to  bring 
for'ard  some  one  noo,  I  tell  ye ;  scar  up  a  dark  horse 
somewhar  before  '84 — somebody  the  people  don't  know 
abaout  and  that  they've  got  to  take  on  trust." 

"  Goot  eedaya !  goot  e'edaya !  "  puffed  an  old  German, 
nodding  his  head.     "  I'm  vid  you  dere." 

Another  smoker  removed  his  cigar  from  his  mouth, 
and  emitting  a  leisurely  cloud  said  quietly :  "  Take  a  no- 
body and  lie  him  up,  eh  ?  " 

"  Why  not,  if  it's  a  choice  between  taking  a  somebody 
and  have  the  other  side  lie  him  down  ?  "  retorted  Calvert. 
"  And  the  fact  is,"  he  continued,  "  a  president  has  got 
to  run  with  his  machine,  anyway.  He's  obliged  to  be 
the  expression  of  the  party  that  put  him  in,  and  one  man 
is  about  as  good  for  that  as  another.  I  could  pick  out 
a  dozen  men,  a  hundred  men,  right  here  in  Buffalo,  who 
could  approve  or  veto  bills,  write  long-winded  messages, 
receive   delegations,    shake   hands    at   receptions,    and   be 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  385 

just  as  good  a  national  figurehead  in  every  way  as  most 
of  those  who've  been  in  the  chair  since  I've  been  a  voter." 

"  I  wish  a  quarter  of  'em  had  been  as  good  presidents 
as  you  would  make,"  cried  an  admirer.  "  Don't  we  wish 
we  had  the  chance  to  vote  for  Frank  Calvert,  boys  ?  I  say, 
let's  drink  to  President  Calvert !  "  And  they  all  laughed 
and  echoed  "  To  President  Calvert,"  and  drained  their 
glasses. 

"  Thanks,"  said  Calvert,  laughing  too,  "  but  you  wouldn't 
kill  me  before  my  time,  would  you?  A  presidential  cam- 
paign often  does  kill  the  unsuccessful  candidate,  you 
know.  I  don't  mean  politically  only,  but  literally.  The 
steady  abuse,  the  long  tension  ending  in  disappointment, 
breaks  their  hearts." 

"  I  hope  this  won't  be  the  death  of  Hancock,"  sighed  a 
young  lawyer  who  had  taken  the  stump  enthusiastically 
for  the  general ;  "  he's  too  noble  a  man  to  be  sacrificed  to 
a  campaign." 

"  In  his  shoes,  I  think  it  would  be  mine,"  cried  Cal- 
vert. "  Such  a  lump  of  pure  human  gold  to  be  beaten 
by  a  Garfield  !  " 

"  Ves,"  echoed  Calvert's  devotee,  "  by  a  piece  of  moral 
punk !  Think  of  a  man  being  paraded  from  one  end  of 
the  Union  to  the  other  by  damn  Republican  lies  and 
hypocrisy  as  a  model  domestic  character  when,  if  he'd 
been  showed  up  as  he  ought  to  have  been,  Hancock  would 
have  shot  in  by  half  a  million  votes." 

"  Don't  care  anything  about  his  private  life,"  said  Cal- 
vert, "that's'  none  of  the  public's  business;  but  why  the 
devil  the  American  people  wanted  to  make  a  man  their 
president  whose  own  constituents  once  asked  him  to  re- 
sign because  they  believed  he  took  bribes  in  Congress, 
and  who  can't  prove  conclusively  that  he  didn't,  is  what 


386  NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

beats  me.  Only  shows  what  the  precious  public  will 
stand  when  once  you  get  a  firm  hold  on  it,"  continued  he 
scornfully;  "put  counterfeit  money  into  circulation  and 
you  may  get  your  twenty  years  for  it ;  but  palm  any  other 
counterfeit  off  on  the  public — religion — art — statesman- 
ship— and,  by  thunder,  they'd  rather  have  it  than  the  real 
thing !  " 

And  so  sat  the  disappointed  men,  and  smoked  and  drank 
and  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth  the  cold  or  angry  cyni- 
cism which  in  so  many  of  the  native-born  voters  had 
taken  the  place  of  the  bright,  trusting  patriotism  of  the 
first  three  generations  of  the  Republic. 

A  man  simple  and  strong  and  true  had  been  beaten  by 
one  specious  and  weak  and  false — nor  was  it  the  first  time. 

"  After  all,  friends,"  cried  Calvert,  as  they  were  separat- 
ing, "  never  say  die !  The  meaning  of  it  is  that  next  time 
we  must  take  a  candidate  not  too  bright  or  good  for  human 
nature's  daily  food,  and  see  what  we  can  do  with  him. 
The  Democratic  Party  kept  in  power  fifty  years  with  just 
such  men,  and  I  guess  we'll  have  to  revert  to  the  old 
policy." 

This  was  not  altogether  true,  but  it  was  as  near  his- 
torical truth  as  Calvert's  ideas  in  general  were,  and  his 
fellow-workers  accepted  it  as  people  always  do  the  state- 
ments of  any  one  who  has  the  brains  to  lead  them. 

As  Calvert  walked  home  alone  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  all  his  inventive  and  executive  faculties  were 
seething  within  him.  One  man  had  suggested  him — him 
— Francis  Calvert,  for  the  Presidency !  Vast  horizon ! 
The  thought  fired  his  imagination  as  the  "  old  rye  "  was 
firing  his  brain,  and  together  they  made  him  feel  like  a 
god.  Involuntarily  he  drew  deeply  in  the  crisp  November 
air  and  looked  up  toward  the  sparkling  stars.     That  lofty 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  387 

altitude !  That  dizzy  pinnacle !  How  could  any  man 
ever  dare  to  dream  of  a  possibility  so  remote — so  difficult ! 
As  he  turned  on  his  sleepless  pillow  he  said  sadly  to 
himself  that  he,  at  least,  could  not.  Frank  Calvert  might 
avail  to  put  some  one  else  in,  but  who  would  work  for 
Frank  Calvert  as  any  man  inaugurated  a  Democratic 
President  must  beforehand  be  worked  for  ?  The  "  noo 
man "  idea,  however,  was  the  true  one,  and  he  would 
begin  upon  it  in  good  time.  He  would  yet  win  a  victory 
for  the  Democratic  Party,  that  great  party  which  he  loved 
because  it  was  his;  but  he  himself  must  be  satisfied  to  be 
the  power  behind  the  throne.  His  divorce  record  would 
never  stand  the  scrutiny  of  a  political  campaign — perhaps 
not  even  for  governor  or  mayor.  His  ex-wife  alone 
would  take  good  care  of  that;  yet  ah,  beside  the  one 
supreme,  tremendous  office  how  paltry  was  everything 
else!  Neverthless,  "Worker  first;  ruler  last,"  was  the 
old  dauntless  attitude  of  his  mind  as  toward  the  gray  of 
the  morning  he  at  length  fell  asleep. 


CHAPTER   XLVI. 

*''  HIS    LITTLE    GAME." 

Since  the  Tweed  regime  and  the  Grant  administration, 
the  country  had  been  growing  more  and  more  disgusted 
with  the  undoubted  municipal  greed  and  corruption  of  all 
city  politicians  and  with  the  theoretical  greed  and  cor- 
ruption of  the  Washington  ones,  and  after  the  presidential 
campaign  which  in  1880,  in  spite  of  the  bribery  charge 
against  him,  had  nominated  and  elected  Garfield,  no  cry 
could  approach  in  popularity  the  opposition  cry  for  re- 
trenchment and  reform.  Ridicule  and  denunciation  of 
machine  politics  were  the  stock-in-trade  of  many  leading 
newspapers.  For  months  and  years  "  Turn  the  rascals 
out !  "  "  The  Republican  Party  must  go ! "  echoed  and 
re-echoed  from  one  great  daily  to  another  whenever  na- 
tional interests  were  under  consideration;  while,  if  it  were 
a  question  of  local  politics,  practical  minds  were  asking 
themselves  what  was  the  mystery  of  a  municipal  corpora- 
tion that  it  should  not  be  conducted  on  the  basis  of  any 
other  corporation?  What  had  Democracy  or  Republican- 
ism to  do  with  keeping  a  city  in  decent  material  or  moral 
order,  or  with  filling  capably  a  local  or  a  national  clerk- 
ship? From  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  Mr.  E.  L.  Godkin, 
the  Anglo-Irish  agnostic  whose  paper.  The  Nation,  was 
the  favorite  weekly  of  the  American  college  graduat^,  had 
insisted  that  the  only  American  political  salvation  was  in 
a  Civil  Service  after  the  British  model,  and  the  American 


AEIV    YORK .    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  389 

college-graduate,  everywhere  an  influential  factor,  aud 
anxious  above  all  things  to  be  like  England,  instead  of  in- 
quiring why  American  virtue  and  talent  had  adequately 
filled  the  local  and  national  Civil  Service  for  the  first  sixty 
years  of  the  Republic  but  was  now  too  degenerate  to  do 
so  without  competitive  examinations,  had  come  to  believe 
that  Mr.  Godkin  was  in  the  right. 

One  American  thinker  alone  of  the  period  that  I  ever 
heard  of,  was  holding  that  the  true  root  of  the  American 
political  degeneracy  so  perpetually  denounced  was  simply 
the  adverse  working  of  the  Ward  and  District  Elective 
Systems  inherited  from  the  Mother  Country,  and  which 
^re  no  longer  suited  to  the  racial  and  religious  hetero- 
geneity which  the  American  People  has  become.  "  Let 
each  voter  have  one  vote  for  one  candidate  as  he  has 
now,"  said  this  Harvard  philosopher,  "  but  instead  of 
limiting  him  to  a  ward  or  a  district  let  him  cast  it  for 
whom  he  will,  and  then  let  the  man  or  men  receiving  the 
highest  number  of  votes  be  the  man  or  men  elected.  This 
would  be  '  Personal  Representation,'  which  is,  and  in  a 
Democracy  like  our  own  alone  can  be,  the  true  manhood 
representation.  Thomas  Hare's  *  Preferential  Voting '  is 
too  complicated  and  fine-spun  for  our  huge  constituencies. 
Our  voting  system  should  be  the  very  simplest  possible, 
and  it  is  absurd  to  object  that  with  it  voters  would  fail  to 
mass  their  votes  upon  men  who  could  be  elected.  That 
would  not  be  human  nature." 

The  shallow  Godkin  Civil  Service  crusade,  however, 
fell  in  marvellously  with  Frank  Calvert's  principles  and 
with  his  aims.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  the  war-cry  of 
the  educated,  of  the  "  best "  people,  of  the  social  ^lite. 
Pie  was  now  of  that  elite,  and  was,  therefore,  instinctively 
drawn  to  stand  with  his  class. 


390  NEW    YORK:   A    S,YM PHONIC  STUDY. 

But  in  the  second  place,  as  with  most  men  of  the  world, 
honesty  and  industry  were  to.  him  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, because  without  honesty  and  industry  business 
could  not  exist,  and  without  business  the  fortunes  which 
alone  make  life  valuable  to  the  Calverts  of  the  earth  would 
be  impossible.  To  such,  these  are  the  cardinal,  the  foun- 
dation, the  only  vital  virtues;  all  the  others  are  compara- 
tively unimportant.  Under  his  guidance,  therefore,  the 
editors  of  his  newspapers  maintained  that  the  "  people  " 
were  longing  and  sighing  for  a  return  to  the  honesty  and 
economy  of  the  Democratic  administrations  before  the 
war,  and  that  they  were  certain  soon  to  arise  in  their 
might  and  secure  such  an  administration.  But  Calvert 
had  no  intention  of  leaving  "  the  people  "  to  work  out 
their  own  salvation.  Embodied  intelligence,  virtue  and 
will  though  his  journals  declared  them  to  be,  he  would, 
if  necessary,  bring  them  blindfolded  to  the  ballot-box  and 
make  them  take  their  leap  in  the  dark — otherwise  the  fools 
might  balk. 

The  year  succeeding  the  Garfield-Hancock  struggle  was 
largely  over,  and  the  local  autumn  elections  were  ap- 
proaching. Buffalo,  the  great  lake  town  in  which  Cal- 
vert lived,  was  of  course  suffering  from  her  city  govern- 
ment, and  also,  of  course,  was  in  the  temper  at  once  in- 
dignant and  passive  over  it  that  nearly  all  American  cities 
chronically  are.  Yet  neither  her  judges  and  leading  law- 
yers, her  solid  bankers  and  merchants,  nor  her  trusted 
clergymen,  physicians  and  schoolmasters  were  meeting  in 
serious  consultation  as  to  who  should  take  charge  of  her 
mterests  for  the  ensuing  year.  In  the  September  of  1881, 
as  in  all  previous  Septembers,  they  were  keeping  cheer- 
fully on  with  their  private  affairs,  and  were  leaving  their 
important  municipality,  the  third  largest  in  the  State,  to 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


391 


be  looked  after  by  Providence,  by  the  politicians,  by  the 
press  and  by  the  Catholic  Church. 

For  weeks  the  various  leaders,  bosses  and  workers  of 
the  Democratic  and  Republican  camps,  with  their  con- 
fidants and  echoes,  the  reporters,  conferred  in  offices, 
saloons  and  bar-rooms,  smoking  and  drinking,  joking  and 
swearing,  arguing  and  bargaining,  until  their  respective 
tickets  were  evolved  as  much  as  possible  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  Irish  politicians  who,  owing  to  this  fatal  and 
benighted  *'  ward  system  "  of  American  municipalities,  are 
able  so  cleverly  to  divide  the  voters  of  our  cities,  that  at 
will  they  trade  and  deal  all  city  offices  and  representatives 
for  the  benefit  first  of  themselves  and  next  and  last  of  that 
ancient  One-Man  Power  on  the  bank  of  the  Tiber  which 
is  their  adored  and  only  real  government. 

Throughout  the  busy  caucus  and  consultation  days  the 
newspapers  and  the  schemers  pulled  well  and  skilfully  the 
wires.  The  "  primaries "  were  all  "  fixed,"  and  went 
through  smooth  as  oil.  Next  came  the  regulation  public 
meetings,  at  which,  with  effusive  speeches  and  responsive 
plaudits,  the  cut-and-dried  nominations  of  the  sub-surface 
"  machines  "  were  ratified  above-board  by  the  "  people." 
Crowning  act  of  all,  the  party  newspapers  displayed  the 
names  of  the  party  candidates  in  big  capitals  at  the  tops 
of  their  columns,  the  street  banners  and  posters  were  got 
out,  and  with  editorials  and  paragraphs  pro  and  con  the 
campaign  was  really  begun. 

At  the  head  of  the  "  reform  "  ticket  championed  by  the 
Democratic  and  the  Independent  newspapers,  appeared 
the  name  of  one  of  Frank  Calvert's  own  political  and 
moral   set,  "  For  Mayor — Grover  Cleveland!* 


CHAPTER    XLVII. 


STATESMAN. 


A  WELL-KNOWN  Tdmiiiany  leader  and  ex-State  Senator, 
Hon.  George  W.  Plunkitt,  of  New  York  City,  said  once 
to  a  reporter :  "  Civil  Service  Reform  is  a  humbug,  and 
if  it  is  kept  up  the  country  must  go  to  ruin.  But  the 
politicians,  thank  God,  will  live  as  long  as  the  country. 
The  boy  who  folds  the  ballots  and  works  around  the  poll- 
ing places  is  the  true  politician.  He  gets  a  nomination, 
is  elected;  he  recognizes  the  people  that  made  him,  and 
they  raise  him  up  step  by  step  until  they  make  him  a 
statesman.  You  can't  become  a  statesman  by  going  into 
these  citizens'  movements."  * 

If  the  speaker  had  had  Calvert's  nominee  in  mind  he 
could  not  more  accurately  have  sketched  his  political 
origin  and  later  career.  In  1881  Stephen  Grover  Cleve- 
land, of  Buffalo,  was  a  middle-aged  lawyer  and  still  un- 
married. The  son  of  a  Presbyterian  minister  of  New 
England  descent,  but  of  a  mother  born  in  Ireland,  by  the 
death  of  his  father  he  had  been  early  left  to  make  his  own 
way  in  the  world.  Coming  a  penniless  youth  to  Buffalo, 
he  entered  a  law  office,  but  also,  before  he  was  of  age  to 
vote,  he  began  "  to  fold  ballots  and  work  around  the 
polling  places."  Eventually  he  "  got  a  nomination  " — that 
for  Assistant  District  Attorney,  and  "  was  elected."    After 

*  New  York  Times,  February  26,  1897. 


NEH'    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  393 

that  his  party  put  him  forward  for  other  things,  and  by 
the  time  he  was  thirty-seven  years  old  he  had  served 
through  two  consecutive  terms  as  the  Sheriff  of  Erie 
County. 

He  was  not  a  college-bred  man,  nor  a  well-read  man, 
nor  a  travelled  man.  Hence  he  was  not  an  educated  man, 
and  that  he  was  not  an  able  man  is  self-evident  from  the 
fact  that  he  could  accept  a  position  so  little  desired  by 
American  lawyers  as  that  of  Sheriff;  but  he  was  intelli- 
gent, honest  and  untiring  in  everything  he  und«rtook, 
and  these  qualities  had  not  only  helped  him  to  his  public 
positions,  but  had  given  him  also,  at  forty-two,  a  respect- 
able though  not  brilliant  place  in  his  profession.  Now 
he  was  candidate  for  Mayor. 

Thus,  "  step  by  step,"  Mr.  Cleveland  was  being  "  raised 
up  "  into  a  "  statesman  "  by  "  the  people  that  made  him  " 
— that  is,  by  his  party  backers  and  associates.  Outside 
of  his  work,  his  haunts  and  his  pursuits  were  those  of 
the  politician  and  the  sport.  He  was  rarely  seen  in  any 
lady's  house;  he  was  never  seen  in  any  church.  Pleasant 
in  manner  to  his  friends,  in  office  he  had  proved  a  stern 
disciplinarian — which  was  perhaps  one  motive  for  put- 
ting him  forward  in  the  present  "  reform  "  campaign. 

More  than  half  the  Buffalo  residents  didn't  know 
"  Grover  Cleveland"  from  Adam  (contemporary  Amer- 
icans seldom  do  know  their  city  candidates  from  Adam), 
but  in  his  address  accepting  the  nomination  he  made  a 
remark  that  pleased  them  and  which  in  shorter  form  his 
adherents  were  destined  to  re-echo  for  him  round  the 
world.  He  said :  "  When  we  consider  that  public  officials 
are  the  trustees  of  the  people,  and  hold  their  places 
and  exercise  their  powers  for  the  benefit  of  the  people, 
there  should  be  no  higher  inducement  to  a  faithful  and 


394  A'A^F    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

honest    discharge    of   public    duty.     These    are    very    old 
truths.     .     .     ." 

*'  Old  "  indeed — only  about  as  old  as  the  hills,  and  until 
the  advent  of  the  Irish  Catholic  vote  in  the  affairs  of 
American  cities  universally  accepted  and  lived  up  to  by 
federal  and  local  officials  throughout  the  United  States. 
The  sentiment  had  been  much  more  tersely  expressed  in 
the  Tilden  Democratic  platform  of  1876,  and  the  biting 
New  York  Sun  once  amused  itself  by  tracing  the  pedigree 
of  the  axiom  previous  to  Mr.  Cleveland  as  follows: 

1790. — Lord  Loughborough:  "Public  office  a  place  of  public 
trust." 

1835. — Daniel  Webster:  "Offices  created  for  the  people  are 
public  trusts." 

1864. — Mr.  Justice  Stephen  J.  Field  :  "  Public  offices  are  trusts 
held  solely  for  the  public  good." 

1876. — Democratic  National  Platform  :  "  Offices  are  not  a  private 
perquisite  ;  they  are  a  public  trust." 

1876.  —  Mr.  Justice  Swayne  in  Trist  vs.  Child  :  "  The  theory  of 
our  government  is  that  all  public  stations  are  trusts." 

1876. — Rutherford  B.  Hayes  :   "  Public  office  is  a  trust." 

1877. — Judge  Cooley  of  Michigan  :  "  Public  office  is  a  public 
trust." 

1881. — Postmaster-General  Thomas  I^.  James:  "The  public 
service  is  a  public  trust." 

1 88 1. — Grover  Cleveland  :  "  Public  officials  are  the  trustees  of  the 
people." 

1888. — An  American  Senator  :  "  Public  office  is  a  private  snap." 

I  have  verified  none  of  the  authorities  cited,  but 
whether  Mr.  Cleveland  had  derived  the  now  famous  say- 
ing from  any  of  these  sources;  whether  as  a  clergyman's 
son  he  had  early  read  in  the  Scriptures  of  the  great  leaders 
of  Israel — of  Moses,  fifteen  hundred,  and  Samuel,  eleven 
hundred   years   before   Christ,    who   took    neither   "  ass," 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  395 

"  ox  '*  nor  "  bribe  "  from  the  chosen  people ;  whether  as 
a  schoolboy  he  had  learned  that  Washington  accepted 
from  his  country  only  his  expenses  for  his  forty-seven 
years  of  arduous  and  incomparable  -service,  or  whether 
it  was  simply  a  shrewd  politician's  instinct  that  a  procla- 
mation of  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  certain  it  is  that  the 
truism  of  political  honor  then  uttered  by  Mr.  Cleveland 
opened  his  campaign  most  auspiciously.  More  than  half 
the  city  journals  so  puffed  and  lauded  him  to  the  skies 
that  his  fellow-citizens  concluded  he  must  be  some  un- 
known Daniel  come  to  judgment  for  the  confounding  of 
the  Buffalo  rings  and  politicians,  and  wh^en  the  election 
day  came  round,  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  hope  they 
made  him  their  chief  magistrate  by  a  larger  majority  than 
they  had  ever  accorded  a  mayor  before. 

In  his  new  and  greater  dignity  the  whilom  Sheriff  fol- 
lowed faithfully  the  counsels  of  the  newspapers  which 
had  advocated  him,  and  really  proved,  therefore,  the 
municipal  "purist  which  these  journals  had  promised. 
After  their  advice  he  saved  the  public  treasury  three 
quarters  of  a  million  by  intrusting  the  construction  of  a 
sewer  to  a  commission  of  citizens  instead  of  to  the  private 
bidder  favored  by  the  city's  Hibernian  aldermen.  On 
another  occasion,  a  street-cleaning  contract  which  had 
been  secured  from  the  same  aldermen  on  their  usual 
Hibernian  terms,  and  which  was  denounced  on  all  sides 
by  the  Buffalo  press,  received  from  his  Honor  a  veto  so 
sternly  couched  that  the  taxpayers  were  enthusiastic  and 
all  his  friends  in  ecstasies. 

I  withhold  my  assent  from  the  action  of  your  honorable  body, 
because  I  regard  it  as  the  combination  of  a  most  bare-faced,  im- 
pudent and  shameless  scheme  to  betray  the  interests  of  the  people  and 
to  worse  than  squander  the  public  money. 


396  ^y^^y    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

It  was  the  first  appearance  of  those  then  unwonted  epi- 
thets— "  bare-faced,'"  "  impudent,"  "  shameless,"  etc.,  etc. — 
which  Mr.  Cleveland  made  so  popular  and  which  carried 
their  author  so  far.  In  this  suave  American  land  where, 
since  the  Civil  War,  we've  all  been  so  afraid  of  the 
Catholic  Irishman  that  nobody  dares  call  a  spade  a  spade, 
but,  like  the  Spartan  boy,  we  allow  this  foreign  fox  to 
gnaw  our  very  vitals  rather  than  be  so  impolite  as  to  men- 
tion him — such  bold,  uncompromising  adjectives  fell  re- 
freshingly on  the  plundered  and  brow-beaten  American 
consciousness.  But  their  truly  portentous  result  was  that 
like  an  inspiration  it  flashed  upon  the  astute  Francis  Cal- 
vert that  the  needed  "  new  man  "  had  appeared,  and  that 
the  next  presidential  campaign  could  immediately  be 
begun. 

In  this  mood  he  invited  a  few  bright  and  trusty  re- 
porters to  a  champagne  supper,  and  when  the  cigars  and 
cigarettes  were  lighted  he  talked  to  them.  He  declared 
that  with  that  message  they  could  make  ''  Gro^e  "  Cleve- 
land Governor  of  New  York.  If  they  did  it,  and  if  as 
^  \cinui  he  pleased  the  people  as  well  as  he  was  pleasing 
Buffalo  as  mayor,  why,  the  next  and  in  fact  natural  step 
would  be  his  nomination  for  president.  An  honest,  faith- 
ful and  careful  executive  of  their  great  State,  not  so  bril- 
liant as  to  make  local  enemies  and  with  no  national  ones, 
would  be  almost  a  sure  thing  as  presidential  candidate  in 
1884.  The  country  was  tired  and  sick  of  the  Republican 
Party  and  by  1884  would  be  utterly  worn  out  with  it. 
The  Democratic  Party  was  bound  to  win  on  the  principle 
of  "  time  for  a  change  "  alone.  But,  besides  that,  Civil 
Service  Reform  was  the  coming  issue,  and  on  that  reform 
Cleveland  would  prove  simply  a  rock.  What  did  they 
think  of  the  scheme?     For  the  honor  of  Buffalo,  and  of 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  397 

the  party,  and  of  their  profession,  which  by  right  was  the 
president-making  profession,  wasn't  it  one  worth  con- 
sidering ? 

The  impecunious  youths  were  flattered  by  the  confidence 
of  the  rich  and  potent  and  fascinating  leader,  and  were 
fired  not  only  by  the  reach  and  daring  of  his  suggestion, 
but  even  more  by  the  important  lole  thus  offered  to  their 
very  obscure  selves.  They  agreed  to  meet  often  for  con- 
sultation, and  to  do  their  utmost  both  personally  and 
through  the  press,  to  create  a  public  opinion  in  the  western 
half  of  the  State  in  favor  of  Mr.  Cleveland  for  governor. 
Resolutely  did  they  go  to  work,  and  so  successfully,  that 
before  the  latter's  year  of  office  was  over,  various  car  loads 
of  politicians — jovial,  eager,  confident — were  actually  roll- 
ing eastward  toward  Syracuse  to  nominate  the  popular 
Mayor  of  Buffalo  as  the  next  executive  of  the  Empire 
State. 


CHAPTER   XLVIII. 

A    "  PARTY  "    NOMINATION. 

Calvert  had  arrived  at  Syracuse  for  conference  with 
other  Democatic  leaders  a  day  or  two  before  the  con- 
vention, and  almost  the  first  person  he  met  at  his  hotel 
was  his  sister-in-law,  Fanny  Howe,  in  her  usual  beaming 
smile  and  becoming  toilette.  She  was  there  apparently 
alone,  but  really  as  the  companion  of  the  noted  "  County  " 
Democrat  and  office-holder  of  the  metropolis  before  al- 
luded to — who,  however,  had  not  yet  appeared  on  the 
scene. 

"  Hullo,  Fanny  !  "  cried  Calvert,  good-humoredly.  "  On 
hand,  as  usual,  for  the  good  of  your  country?" 

"  Of  course,"  returned  Fanny,  nonchafently.  "  Con- 
ventions are  great  fun,  I  think.  Mind  you  come  in  and 
tell  me  all  about  it  when  you  get  time.  H  you  say  so, 
I'll  sit  up  for  you  to-night." 

"  All  right,  I'll  come." 

Though  of  all  men  on  earth  the  man  most  indifferent 
to  any  given  woman  is  her  brother-in-law.  Frank  Calvert 
had  never  felt  quite  this  icy  calm  in  regard  to  his  wife's 
sister  Fanny.  Men  live  in  the  present.  Women  generally 
live  in  the  past  or  in  the  future — or  rather,  as  Mrs.  Julia 
Ward  Howe  put  it,  "  At  the  banquet  of  life  men  do  the 
carving  and  women  take  the  helpings."  But,  after  all,  this 
is  to  be  a  mental  drag  on  the  men,  if  not  a  silent  reproach. 
When,  therefore,  a  woman  is  capable  of  making  the  best 
of  things — of  instantly  forgetting  the  past  and  living  in- 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY 


399 


tensely  and  energetically  in  the  present — and  even,  if  ne- 
cessary, of  taking  care  of  herself,  an  intense  and  energetic 
man  likes  and  enjoys  that  woman.  She  may  not  be  his 
ideal,  but  she  is  a  kindred  spirit,  a  hon  camarade,  and  in 
this  aspect  Frank  Calvert  had  always  enjoyed  and  been 
drawn  to  Fanny. 

The  Civil  War  had  entirely  alienated  himself  and  David 
Howe.  The  latter  couldn't  help  regarding  Calvert  with 
horror  as  a  "  copperhead,"  and  on  his  side  Calvert  es- 
teemed Howe  as  a  bloodless  prig  and  a  political  ianatic. 
He  despised  him,  moreover,  for  not  recovering  faster  from 
his  financial  troubles,  and  he  pitied  the  gay  and  pleasure- 
loving  wife  for  being  tied  for  life  to  a  plodder  who 
couldn't  give  her  plenty  of  money  and  a  larger  instead 
of  a  lesser  swing  as  time  went  on. 

When  the  end  came,  and  the  noble  David's  side  of  their 
story  was  left  unbreathed,  Calvert's  sympathy  remained 
with  Fanny,  and  though  he  accepted  her  version  of  affairs 
with  a  good  deal  of  allowance,  he  wasn't  sure  that,  in  her 
place,  he  would  not  have  been  equally  reckless.  Every 
Christmas  he  sent  her  a  hundred  dollars,  and  her  plaint 
for  an  occasional  fifty  never  went  unheeded.  He  did  not 
live  in  New  York,  and  the  Baldwins  kept  quiet  about  the 
Hotel  Surrey  episode.  So  he  forbore  to  trouble  himself  as 
to  whether  Fanny's  vivid  and  persistent  interest  in  politics 
had  any  special  underlying  reason.  This  interest  amused 
him,  and  when  in  New  York  he  would  drop  in  upon  her 
if  he  had  time  and  talk  matters  over  from  her  point  of 
view. 

Late  on  the  night  in  question  he  appeared  at  her  rooms. 
"  Wh-e-ew ! "  he  sighed,  as  he  threw  himself  upon  a 
lounge.  "  How  tired  I  am !  These  State  nominations 
are  the  very  devil.     Ticklish  business.     You  never  know 


400  NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


whose  toes  you're  treading  on  until  up  starts  an  enemy 
and  opposes  all  your  plans.  But  let's  have  some  cham- 
pagne," looking  round  for  the  bell,  then  rising  and  ring- 
ing it.  "  I've  been  pouring  out  the  fizz  like  water  to 
other  men  all  day,  and  naturally  haven't  taken  much  my- 
self. Nothing  fetches  'em  like  champagne,  Fanny,  eh, 
and  lots  of  it.  Now  I'll  indulge  in  a  bottle,  and  I  sup- 
pose you  won't  object  to  helping  me?"  with  a  roguish 
twinkle  and  laugh. 

Fanny  was  effectively  arrayed  in  black  lace,  with  a 
touch  of  pink  upon  the  bodice  and  a  little  also  upon  her 
cheeks.  By  gaslight  the  bedimned  sight  of  Calvert's  fifty- 
five  years  did  not  perceive  too  sharply  the  touch  of  time, 
and  when  he  was  comfortably  ensconced  on  the  lounge, 
cigar  in  mouth,  with  Fanny  and  her  cigarette  on  the  other 
side  of  a  little  table,  and  between  them  their  fairy-bub- 
bling glasses,  from  under  his  half-closed  lids  his  gaze 
rested  upon  her  with  content.  Still  was  she  that  pleasing 
vision  of  which  the  wise  Dexter  daughters  never  de- 
frauded the  masculine  eye. 

"  Well,  Frank,"  she  said,  as  a  light  smoke-wreath  es- 
caped her  lips,  "what's  up?" 

"  What's  up  is  that  I  was  so  mad  when  Hancock  was 
defeated  that  I  swore  I'd  try  what  could  be  done  to  build 
some  one  up  for  the  presidency  solid  from  the  founda- 
tion. My  Buffalo  friends  and  I  are  tired  being  whipped 
with  phcenixes  and  '  favorite  sons '  for  candidates,  and 
for  a  change  thought  we'd  go  back  to  first  principles  and, 
as  old  Jack  Whitcomb  expressed  it,  '  scar  up  a  dark  horse 
somewhar'  and  get  him  in  training.  Where  should  he 
turn  up  but  in  Buffalo  itself — right  in  our  own  set — that 
is,  if  I'm  any  judge.  We  elected  Grove  Cleveland  mayor 
last  fall,  just  as  a  good  local  executive,  you  know,  but, 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY 


401 


by  Jove,  he's  come  out  so  strong  that  we've  booked  him 
for  governor.  We're  going  to  nominate  him,  and  we're 
going  to  elect  him,  and — don't  you  see — that'll  bring  us 
out  all  right  for  1884." 

"  So  that's  your  little  game,  is  it  ?  And  you  really  be- 
lieve New  York  City  is  going  to  be  dictated  to  by  Buf- 
falo?" 

"  By  Buffalo  and  by  Albany  and  a  few  other  little 
places,  Mrs.  Fanny,  If  I  and  some  other  men  lived  in 
your  town,  perhaps  she  wouldn't  be  going  to  bring  up  the 
rear  this  week.  As  it  is,  we  propose  to  show  you  New 
Yorkers  what  the  rest  of  the  State  can  do.  You're  so 
loaded  down  there  with  Irish  that  you'll  never  bring  the 
party  out  on  top.  The  Republican  Party  is  the  American 
Party  and  thats  why  it  beats.  It's  got  the  American 
brains,"  (Calvert  quite  forgot  that  it  also  had  the  Amer- 
ican— i.  e.,  the  Puritan — principles.)  "  *  Paddy  from 
Cork  '  can't  get  ahead  of  Brother  Jonathan  when  Jonathan 
is  awake;  you  may  bet  your  life  on  that.  Until  we  get 
more  American  blood  into  the  Democratic  Party  north, 
the  party  '11  have  to  take  the  back  seat  every  time.  Before 
the  war  it  was  managed  by  Americans.  Southerners,  you 
know,  are  simon-pure  Americans,  and  that's  why  they 
kept  the  party  in  so  many  years.  They  were  smart. 
Since  secession  the  party  has  been  the  football  of  New 
York  Tammany  politicians,  and,  damn  'em,  they  sell  out 
the  nation  for  the  city  offices  about  every  time — just  as 
they  did  Hancock  in  '80.  They  will  run  the  party,  and 
yet  they  can't  do  it,  thieves  and  blackguards  that  they 
are !  They  only  disgrace  it,  and  make  the  decent  natives 
afraid  of  it  right  along."  ' 

"  If  your  Irish  friends  could  hear  you  go  on,  I  wouldn't 
give  much  for  your  candidate's  chances,"  returned  Fanny. 


402  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"  Don't  I  know  that  ?  Most  mercenary,  most  ungrate- 
ful, most  treacherous  and  revengeful  race  on  earth ! 
Think  I'd  dare  talk  so  to  any  one  but  you?  Look  what 
the  country's  done  for  those  beggars,  bog-trotters  and  gas- 
bags, that  could  never  manage  even  their  own  little  Island; 
and  yet  there  isn't  an  American  of  us  they  wouldn't  stab 
in  the  back  politically  if  they  could.  By  gad,  when  it's 
been  forced  on  you  all  day  that  their  only  view  of  politics 
is  a  grab  game  for  the  Irish,  it  does  make  you  sick  and 
tired  and  mad.  And  the  public  is  sick  of  it  too — this  ever- 
lasting stealing." 

"  Stealing !  "  demurred  Fanny.  "  Oh,  Frank,  you  don't 
mean  that !     Stealing  is  too  strong  a  term." 

"  Not  at  all  too  strong.  What's  bribery  and  blackmail 
and  corruption  but  stealing?  Why,  bless  you,  if  a  man 
wants  to  start  any  kind  of  an  enterprise  for  his  own  or 
the  public  good,  it's  lobby  with  an  alderman,  or  lobby  with 
an  assemblyman,  or  lobby  with  a  congressman,  and  sooner 
or  later  sneaks  out  like  a  snake  and  coils  in  your  path 
'What's  there  in  this  for  me?'  But,  as  I  said,  the  pub- 
lic is  getting  sick  of  k.  It's  going  to  draw  the  line  there. 
Politics  may  not  demand  any  other  virtue,  but  it  does 
demand  honesty.  What  did  the  people  always  call  Lincoln 
as  he  was  rising  into  prominence  but  'Honest  old  Ahe'f 
That  was  what  really  took  the  country  in  the  first  place. 
And  Grove  Cleveland  is  a  chip  of  the  same  block.  He 
won't  steal.  That's  as  certain  as  the  sun.  And  he  won't 
let  anybody  else  steal  either — not  if  he  knows  it.  He's 
made  just  the  record  we  want — this  last  year — just  the 
record  to  go  before  the  State  with ;  clear,  simple,  straight- 
forward; everybody  can  understand  it." 

"  I'll  hear  you  talking  Civil  Service  Reform  next," 
laughed  Fanny. 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


403 


"  Yes,  you  will.  I'm  talking  it  now,  and  I'm  going  to 
talk  it  from  this  on.  It's  been  dinned  into  the  public  so 
long  that  we've  got  to  recognize  it." 

"  Funny  to  hear  you  going  in  for  honest  politics,"  re- 
turned Fanny.  "  'Tisn't  two  years  since  I  heard  you 
sneering  at  '  Snivel '   Service  Reform." 

"  Can't  help  it.  I'm  a  convert  now.  And  it  is  a  good 
thing.  An  honest,  efficient  Civil  Service  is  a  very  im- 
portant thing,  and  the  party's  got  to  promise  it  whether 
it  can  perform  it  or  not.  We'll  be  with  the  reformers 
in  precept  if  we  can't  in  practice.  Fan,  eh?"  and  Cal- 
vert laughed. 

"  It'll  make  Tammany  raging  not  to  have  the  say  this 
year,"  said  Fanny  earnestly.  "  I  hear  Roswell  Flower 
wants  the  nomination,  and  they  want  to  give  it  to  him — 
he's  so  rich.  Great  big  '  bar'l,'  isn't  there?  And  I  don't 
know  about  my  friends  the  '  Countys'  working  for  pure 
virtue  either,  though  they  do  pretend  to  be  reformers  and 
to  hold  up  holy  hands  at  Tammany.  '  To  the  victor  be- 
long the  spoils '  is  just  about  Gotham  gospel,  Frank, 
whether  it's  Tammany  Democracy  or  County  Democracy 
or  the  old  Republican  frauds  themselves,  and  you  know 
that  as  well  as  I  do." 

"  Get  the  party  in  first,  Fanny,  and  the  loaves  and  fishes'll 
take  care  of  themselves.  The  only  thing  now  is  to  make 
the  good  cause  win.  No  party  in  the  saddle  ever  forgets 
who  placed  it  there.  It  can't  afford  to.  If  the  college 
chaps  want  to  fool  themselves  with  thinking  the  con- 
trary, we  must  simply  humor  'em.  So  long  as  presidents, 
governors  and  mayors  have  the  appointing  power,  you 
might  as  well  expect  them  to  stand  on  their  heads  as  not 
to  bestow  office  on  the  workers  who  get  them  into  their 
own." 


404  A'i^^^    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


'*  Then  you  don't  believe  in  Civil  Service  Reform  after 
all,"  cried  Fanny  exultingly.  "  I  thought  it  was  queer  if 
the  leopard  had  changed  his  spots." 

"  Yes,  but  I  do  believe  in  it,"  insisted  Calvert ;  "  it's  an 
excellent  thing.  I'd  like  to  see  it  adopted  myself,  or,  at 
least,  tried.  But  it's  a  British  system,  and  the  head  of 
the  British  government  doesn't  change  every  four  years 
as  our  does.  Whether  it  is  practicable  in  American  poli- 
tics is  the  question." 

"  I  knew  you'd  back  down,"  persisted  Fanny  gaily. 
"  And  why,"  reproachfully,  '"  should  you  pretend  before 
me,  Frank?  You're  not  parading  on  a  platform  or  in 
your  editorial  columns;  so  there's  no  call  for  goody- 
goody." 

"  Pshaw,  Fanny,  you  don't  understand  me.  Women 
never  do  understand  men.  They  always  think  we've  got 
to  be  one  thing  or  the  other." 

"  Like  ourselves,"  laughed  Fanny,  tossing  ofif  a  bumper. 
"  We  despise  half-way  people  on  the  principle  of 

'  There  was  a  little  girl 
Who  had  a  little  curl 
Right  in  the  middle  of  her  fore-head. 
When  she  was  good 
She  was  very,  very  good, 
But  when  she  was  bad  she  was  hor-rid  ; ' 

— for  '  girl '  read  '  female  sex.'  Did  you  know  Longfellow 
wrote  that  ?  " 

"  No,  nor  you  either." 

"  He  did." 

"  Don't  believe  you  !  " 

"  Tell  you  he  did !  A  friend  of  mine  got  it  from  his 
children's  governess  in  Cambridge  years  ago." 


CHAPTER    XLIX. 


vox    POPULI. 


By  the  next  twenty-four  hours  after  the  above  confi- 
dential chat,  the  streets  and  hotels  of  Syracuse,  to  abridge 
from  a  graphic  reporter,  "  were  full,  and  the  brightly-lit 
bar-rooms  were  swarming  with  delegates  from  every  part 
of  the  State,  three-quarters  of  whom  had  already  drunk 
deep  to  their  respective  candidates.  Everybody  was  argu- 
ing and  shouting  for  somebody.  The  noise  was  deafening, 
the  heat  intense  and  the  turmoil  something  terrible. 
Mayor  Cleveland's  five  hundred  townsmen  spread  them- 
selves judiciously,  and  began  their  work  by  enthusiastic 
laudations  and  by  inviting  delegates  to  go  over  to  his 
hotel  and  see  '  the  next  governor.' 

"If  the  delegates  accepted,  in  a  crowded  room  in  a 
second-class  hotel  they  found  a  very  stout  personage  with 
a  phenomenally  thick  neck  and  shrewd  eyes,  who  greeted 
them  affably  and  said  he  was  '  in  the  hands  of  his  friends,' 
whereupon  some  of  the  *  friends  '  stepped  forward  and 
asked  the  visitors  *  what  they  would  take '  from  a  big 
tub  full  of  bottles  in  ice  which  stood  conveniently  in  the 
background. 

"  *  But  who  is  he?'  inquired  a  delegate  of  one  of  the 
Buffalo  politicians. 

"  *  Grove  Clev2land.  He's  Mayor  of  Buffalo,  and  he's 
one  of  us.     Wait  till  you  size  him  up,'  was  the  answer. 

"  '  But  if  he  gets  the  nomination  the  people  will  want 


4o6  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

to  know  something  about  him.  They  have  never  heard 
of  him,  and  they  will  be  put  to  it  to  find  out  who  he  is.' 

"  *  Dot  is  de  reason  he  is  going  to  vin,'  exploded  an  old 
Buffalo  German  who  overheard  the  objection ;  '  'cause 
nopody  knows  him,  and  dose  vat  don't  know  him  likes 
him.  Dot  is  de  trouble  mit  you  Ny  York  bolidicians. 
Everypody  knows  'em,  and  de  more  dey  knows  'em  de 
more  dey  don't  likes  'em.' 

''  Besides  the  persuasive  work  of  personal  interviews, 
the  town  was  flooded  with  Cleveland  circulars,  beginning 
with  his  parentage,  birth  and  religious  training  (his  father 
being  a  Presbyterian  minister),  and  ending  with  his  in- 
valuable services  to  Buffalo." 

On  the  following  day  Mayor  Cleveland's  denunciatory 
veto  of  the  unpopular  street-cleaning  contract  was  read 
in  the  convention  as  proof  positive  of  his  wisdom,  virtue 
and  courage,  and  it  gained  him  an  enthusiastic  nomina- 
tion. 

It  was  not  suggested  nor  pretended  that  the  city  of 
Buffalo  had  been  any  better  behaved,  better  taught  or 
better  kept  during  this  momentous  mayoralty  than  before 
it — that  it  was  likely  to  become  more  moral,  more  intel- 
ligent or  more  beautiful  as  its  result.  But  since  the  set- 
ting in  of  Irish  rule  in  this  country,  the  virtues  which,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  are  expected  by  the  least  exacting  em- 
ployer of  the  lowest  and  poorest  employ^ — first,  that  he 
will  not  steal,  and  second,  that  he  will  do  the  work  he  is 
paid  to  do — have  quite  generally  become  the  only  ones 
demanded  by  Americans  for  the  highest  offices  within 
their  gift.  Because  through  the  previous  twelvemonth  a 
certain  Stephen  Grover  Cleveland  had  not  stolen  the  Buf- 
falo public  money  nor  let  any  one  else  steal  it,  and  also 
had  faithfully  performed  the  official  routine  that  he  was 


A^A^F    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  407 

paid  to  perform,  and  that  he  had  taken  oath  to  perform, 
on  the  night  of  this  Syracuse  convention  he  laid  his  head 
on  his  pillow  the  candidate  for  the  governorship  of  five 
millions  of  his  fellow  beings;  five  millions,  or  about  two 
millions  more  than  those  ruled  during  their  epoch-making 
lives  by  the  astute  Elizabeth  or  by  the  sublime  Wash- 
ington. 

The  ensuing  campaign  was  perfectly  managed  by  Cal- 
vert and  a  few  politicians  of  Albany  and  New  York  City 
as  rich,  able  and  resolute  as  himself.  The  people  of  the 
State  knew  still  less  about  their  Democratic  candidate  for 
governor  than  the  year  before  the  people  of  Buffalo  had 
known  about  their  Democratic  candidate  for  mayor — that 
is,  they  knew  absolutely  nothing.  But  enthusiastic  para- 
graphs and  editorials,  which  penetrated  everywhere, 
quickly  informed  them,  and  illuminated  the  New  Man 
just  enough  to  make  him  amid  the  obscurity  that  still 
surrounded  him  almost  romantically  interesting.  What 
might 'not  be  as  a  whole  the  personality  of  which  this 
little  was  so  fine ! 

What  made  the  campaign  particularly  brilliant  and 
memorable,  however,  was  the  coming  over  to  the  Demo- 
cratic candidate  of  the  so-called  "  Independent  Repub- 
licans." 


CHAPTER   L. 

AN    ANGLO-IRISH    LEADER. 

Beyond  a  doubt  the  most  priceless  gift  of  the  Emerald 
Isle  to  this  benighted  land  upon  which  it  has  bestowed 
so  many,  was  the  agnostic  editor  of  the  Nation  and  the 
Evening  Post,  E.  L.  Godkin,  Esq.,  of  New  York,  nor 
could  anything  more  '*  Irish  "  be  imagined  than  this  jour- 
nalist's ambition  to  "  boss  "  the  American  political  "  job  " 
as  compared  with  his  Celtic  unfitness  to  do  it. 

When,  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  this  youthful 
aspirant  began  the  Godkinization  of  the  United  States, 
he  was  an  abolitionist  and  a  woman  suffragist.  He  was 
probably  the  former  because  the  high-class  Britisli  pro- 
gressives were  such,  and  the  latter  because  he  fancied 
the  high-class  American  progressives  were  as  eager  for 
the  political  equality  of  white  women  as  they  had  been 
for  that  of  black  men.  He  found,  however,  that  the  lit- 
erary and  social  elite  from  whom  on  this  side  he  sought 
recognition,  drew  the  line  at  woman  suffrage,  and  so, 
after  the  Civil  War,  he  exchanged  the  rash  concessions 
of  his  green  and  salad  days  for  the  cynical  de  haut  en 
has  toward  the  weaker  sex  which  is  the  native  air  of  all 
born  subjects  of  that  peculiarly  mediaeval  personality — 
the  late  Victoria  Regina  Dei  Gratia. 

Mr.  Godkin's  missionary  yearning  over  his  adopted 
country  growing  with  his  years,  however,  and  strengthen- 
ing with  his  strength,  he  eventually  hit  upon  a  congenial 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


409 


field  for  its  exercise  in  preaching  Civil  Service  Reform. 
This,  no  less  than  Abolition,  Free  Trade  and  Contempt 
for  Women,  "  is  English,  you  know,"  and  therefore  must 
be  an  all-sufficient  way  of  political  salvation  for  any  other 
form  of  government. 

For  some  years  the  United  States  didn't  mind  Mr.  God- 
kin  much,  but  at  last,  because  the  book-notices  of  the 
Nation  were  confident  and  clever,  its  foreign  resum^  in- 
teresting and  its  art  and  music  criticisms  more  or  less 
able,  his  readers,  who,  as  has  been  said,  were  chiefly  uni- 
versity men,  grew  first  to  respect  his  political  views,  next 
to  agree  with  them,  and  then  to  echo  and  rally  round  the 
Celtic  regenerator.  His  assumption  of  editing  an  "  in- 
dependent "  organ  pleased  their  self-respect — since  every- 
body likes  to  believe  himself  "  independent  " — and  when  to 
the  conducting  of  the  weekly  Nation  he  joined  that  of 
the  old  and  valued  New  York  Evening  Post,  he  found 
himself  on  the  adored  pinnacle  of  the  immigrant  foreign 
mind,  that,  namely,  of  being  a  factor  in  American  na- 
tional politics.  He  was  the  creator  and  practically  the 
chief  of  the  influential  "  Independent  Republicans,"  and 
really,  though  of  course  not  avowedly,  in  his  train  were 
such  powerful  journals  as  the  Boston  Herald  and  the 
Springfield  Republican,  together  with  the  favorite  and 
widely-read  New  York  weeklies,  Puck,  Life  and  Harper  s, 
the  authoritative  New  York  Times,  and  even  the  at  that 
time  all-assuming  and  supercilious  New  York  Herald 
itself. 

Without  a  ray  of  James  Russell  Lowell's  genius — his 
life  and  sparkle — Mr.  Godkin  adopted  toward  those  he 
deprecated  the  inexcusable  Lowell  method — namely,  sar- 
casm and  ridicule.  The  Nation  and  the  Post  were  al- 
ways  immensely   "  amused "   with  the   tergiversations   of 


4IO  yVi5:^F    YORK:   A    SY^I PHONIC  STUDY, 

American  politics,  both  national  and  local,  especially 
local.  Their  readers  were  constantly  told  how  "  funny  " 
or  "  absurd  "  or  "  curious  "  or  "  droll  "  were  the  political 
antics  and  intrigues  and  plunderings  of  the  "  Pat "  or 
"  Mike  "  or  "  Jimmy  "  or  "  Dick  "  of  the  day  and  their 
fellows — what  a  huge  "  joke  "  all  round  was  their  clutch 
upon  and  their  administration  of  the  New  York  City 
government.  And  the  rushing  New  Yorkers  laughed 
with  the  sardonic  editor,  took  his  vitriolic  jesting  literally, 
thought  it  all  was  "  funny,"  very  funny  indeed,  and  went 
on  "  attending  to  business,"  while  their  foreign  journalists, 
foreign  bosses,  foreign  saloon-keepers  and  foreign  eccle- 
siastics attended  to  their  metropolis. 

More  than  any  single  influence  Mr.  Godkin  created 
the  "  Anglo-maniac "  and  made  educated  Americans 
ashamed  of  their  own  country  and  eager  to  reverse  its 
traditions,  even  the  holiest.  As  time  went  on,  his  British 
contempt  for  women  deepened  into  hatred  of  the  Amer- 
ican reverence  for  them,  and  by  the  centennial  year  of 
the  Republic  he  was  so  sure  of  a  complaisant  audience 
that  he  ventured  upon  the  following,  the  italics  being  my 
own: 

We  do  not  know  when  the  family  was  founded  and  the  rearing 
of  children  became  the  first  social  duty  of  parents  ;  but,  whenever  it 
was,  personal  purity  became  the  first  and  most  imperative  duty  of 
the  mother,  because,  without  that,  whatever  the  father's  conduct 
might  be,  the  family  would  be  impossible.  The  family  rests  wholly 
on  the  husband's  certainty  about  the  paternity  of  his  wife's  children, 
and  his  certainty  can  only  come  from  confidence  in  his  wife's  char- 
acter. Consequently,  all  that  portion  of  the  moral  code  of  all  civil- 
ized communities  which  touches  on  the  relation  of  the  sexes,  places 
feminine  purity  highest  in  the  scale  of  feminine  virtues  and  points  in 
the  clearest  manner  to  the  preservation  of  the  family  as  its  first  if  not 
its  only  object.      ... 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


411 


Society,  however,  has  found  it  by  no  means  an  easy  task  to  im- 
pose this  burden  on  women.  All  attempts  to  regulate  the  relations  of 
the  sexes  have  been  the  very  hardest  part  of  the  tight  of  civilization 
against  savager)',  and  of  course,  it  has  been  only  partially  successful. 
But  to  succeed  in  it  at  all.  in  never  so  slight  a  degree,  the  sternest 
and  most  far-reaching  discipline  has  been  and  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary. .  .  .  Society  has  reasonably  enough  said  that  the  struggle 
was  too  severe  to  allow  of  exemption,  and  that  ivhatever  restraints 
were  found  necessary  for  the  fortification  of  Jemale  character  should 
be  submitted  to  by  all,  whatever  their  aims  in  life  ;  that  in  or  out  of 
matrimony  there  should  be  but  one  code  of  morals  for  women,  and 
that  in  this  code  the  virtue  most  useful  to  society  should  stand  first, 
Accordingly,  even  when  it  is  admitted  that  the  preservation 
of  the  family  is  the  object  of  female  purity,  it  has  never  been  per- 
missible even  for  the  women  who  lay  aside  all  intention  to  enter  into 
matrimony  to  escape  the  common  law.     * 

And  the  foreigner  who  could  thus  insult  and  besmirch 
the  mothers  and  wives  of  all  Christendom,  including  his 
own,  American  gentlemen  and  clergymen  accepted  as  a 
moral  and  political  guide  and  standard  for  nearly  a  gener- 
ation, and  by  the  years  1882  and  1884  were  ready  to 
mass  themselves  together  to  exalt  to  their  highest  political 
honors  a  candidate  after  such  a  heart  and  conscience  as 
his! 

Mr.  Godkin's  newspapers,  and  with  them  the  aforesaid 
powerful  "  Independent "  press,  had  long  been  echoing 
the  Democratic  Party  in  its  demands  for  Local  Self-Gov- 
ernment  for  the  conquered  South  and  for  Specie  Resump- 
tion and  Reduced  Tariff  for  the  whole  country;  but  these 
Independents  had  not  brought  themselves  to  enlist  under 
the  Democratic  banner.  For  many  and  difficult  years  the 
noble  Democratic  leaders — Thurman,  Beck,  Bayard,  Hen- 
dricks, Randall,  Hew^itt,  Seymour  and  others — had  stood 

*  The  Nation,  May  30,  1876. 


412  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

in  the  Democratic  van  and  against  overwhelming  Re- 
publican odds  had  fought  the-  battles  of  the  foundation 
articles  of  Jeffersonian  faith.  Amid  the  fierce  after-re- 
sentment and  revenges  of  the  Civil  War  these  pillars  of 
Americanism  had  boldly  upheld  for  their  conquered 
brothers  the  "  inalienable  "  rights  of  the  Federal  Consti- 
tution, nor  had  any  shadow  ever  fallen  upon  the  bright 
personal  record  with  which  they  had  fulfilled  alike  every 
private  and  every  public  trust. 

Yet,  when  the  Independent  Republicans  came  round 
finally  to  the  logic  of  Americanism,  and,  acting  together 
with  the  great  Democrats,  thereby  forced  the  then  Repub- 
lican administration  to  withdraw  the  United  States  troops 
from  the  conquered  section — still  they  would  not  frankly 
join  hands  with  the  Democrats;  still  did  these  wise  and 
incorruptible  and  patriotic  men  hear  only  the  same 
old  Independent  Evening-P ost-N ation  accusation,  *'  The 
Democratic  Party  cannot  be  trusted" 

Suddenly  an  obscure  provincial,  an  ordinary  lawyer,  a 
local  Democratic  "  worker "  from  his  very  youth,  one 
who  was  socially  and  morally  unknown  either  to  the 
cultivated  or  to  the  religious  elements  of  his  own  city, 
whose  evening  haunts  were  bar-rooms  and  clubs,  who 
as  Sheriff  had  hanged  fellow-creatures  with  his  own  hand, 
thereby  proving  that  he  could  not  possibly  be  a  gentle- 
man,* and  concerning  whom  baleful  personal  things  were 
now  being  whispered  through  their  own  newspaper  offices 
— this  man  the  Independent  editors  joyfully  concluded 
they  could — this  man  they  enthusiastically  did  "  trust." 

The  secret  of  this  holding  off  of  the  Independents  from 
the  Democratic  Party  was  the  fear  that  they  could  not 

*  It  was  usual  to  hire  a  workingman  as  substitute  in  the  awful  oflSce, 
and  pay  him  $25. 


NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


413 


impose  upon  it  the  special  Godkin  fetich  of  Civil  Service 
Reform.  They  doubted  whether  the  experienced  states- 
men whom  they  had  not  led  but  had  been  obliged  to  fol- 
low on  the  burning  post-bellum  questions  would  accept 
their  chosen  shibboleth — and  this  though  they  owed  the 
first  Civil  Service  Reform  bill  that  was  passed  in  Con- 
gress to  the  pronounced  Democrat,  Pendleton,  of  Ohio. 
A  ''  new  man,"  however,  who  would  be  under  great  poli- 
tical obligations  to  themselves,  must  certainly  be  their 
creature. 

It  was  their  chance,  and  they  seized  it.  With  glowing 
ardor  they  arrayed  themselves  under  the  Cleveland  ban- 
ner. The  Republican  candidate,  a  high-minded,  honor- 
able, conspicuous  citizen,  to  his  amazement  and  agony 
found  himself  assailed  and  denounced  not  only  by  the 
Democrats,  but  also  by  the  Independents  of  his  own 
party,  as  the  tool  and  exponent  of  the  administration 
"  machine "  at  Washington.  The  voting  Americans,  as 
Americans  always  do  (but  as  voting  Catholics  never  do), 
listened  to  the  newspapers  and  believed.  Republicans  by 
tens  of  thousands  either  abstained  from  voting  or  voted 
for  the  Democratic  Mayor  of  Buffalo,  and  on  the  election 
day  Calvert's  candidate  was  swept  into  the  governor's 
chair  by  a  majority  lour  or  five  times  larger  than  had 
ever  seated  a  New  York  governor  before — by  the  enor- 
mous, the  unprecedented  majority  of   192,000  votes ! 

On  the  first  act  of  Calvert's  vast  and  daring  drama 
Time's  solemn  curtain  descended  amid  a  whirlwind  of 
delirious  joy. 


CHAPTER    LI. 

A    TRAITOR    TO    JEFFERSON. 

But  for  the  bold  and  brilliant  party-strategist  "  trouble 
was  hard  at  hand " — the  deepest.  Though  the  star  of 
Calvert's  political  power  and  prestige  was  rising  with 
accelerating  rapidity,  his  darling,  his  Clara,  lapsed  into 
semi-invalidism,  then  sank,  the  prostrate  victim  of  one 
of  those  insidious  maladies  whose  cause  an  autopsy  can 
make  clear  enough,  but  whose  baffling  symptoms  medicine 
^s  powerless  to  control  or  even  affect.  In  spite  of  every- 
thing that  money  and  tenderness  could  do,  in  piteous 
weakness  Clara  Calvert  faded  away  before  her  father's 
despairing  eyes,  and  was  buried  a  few  months  before  the 
opening  of  the  presidential  campaign  of  1884. 

In  the  privacy  of  his  own  heart  Calvert's  grief  was 
wild,  his  home-desolation  a  horror.  Why,  oh,  why,  could 
he  never,  never  be  at  rest?  Why  would  happiness  ever 
flit  before  him,  and  just  when  he  thought  he  had  attained 
it  mock  him  again  from  a  still  remoter  height? 

But  his  agony  did  not  divert  him  from  the  main  pur- 
pose of  his  life.  Rather  was  it  doubly  necessary  to  him, 
that  its  external  claims  might  distract  him  from  his  inner 
tortures.  On  the  Democratic  State  Committee  he  con- 
tinued to  be  deeply  engaged  with  his  influential  coadjutors 
from  Albany  and  New  York  in  organizing  their  party 
forces  for  the  struggle  which  they  were  all  hoping  would 
at  last  seat  in  the  presidential  chair  at  once  a  Democrat 
and  a  New  Yorker. 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY 


415 


As  Governor,  Calvert's  political  discovery  pursued  an 
industrious,  painstaking,  earth-bound  way,  sustained  by 
the  uninterrupted  plaudits  of  the  Democrats  of  the  State, 
and  nearly  so  of  its  Independent  Republicans.  In  Albany, 
as  in  Buffalo,  he  was  "  in  the  hands  of  his  friends  "  (i.  e., 
managers),  and  their  experience,  together  with  his  own 
acuteness,  kept  him  well  in  touch  on  the  one  side  with 
the  politicians  to  whom  he  must  owe  a  presidential  nomi- 
nation, and  on  the  other  with  the  fearful  power  of  the 
press  to  which  he  must  owe  a  presidential  election.  He 
signed  bills  which  it  was  "  good  politics  "  to  approve,  and 
vetoed  bills  which  it  was  "  good  politics  "  to  reject,  and 
for  the  remaining  claims  of  his  lofty  station — for  those 
which  society,  art,  culture  and  philanthropy  do  and  must 
make  upon  the  conspicuous  and  the  powerful  in  the 
land — Governor  Cleveland,  though  a  member  of  a  liberal 
profession,  either  had  no  consciousness  or  manifested 
none.  In  fact,  he  specially  plumed  himself  upon  his  con- 
ception of  high  administrative  office  as  a  fuifction  of 
"  business  "  merely,  and  to  be  carried  out  on  **  business  " 
principles. 

I  think  the  real  business  man,  Frank  Calvert  himself, 
travelled,  experienced,  aesthetic — strong  and  influential 
also  through  his  own  gifts  and  efforts  rather  than  through 
the  political  wire-pulling  of  his  fellow-partisans — would 
probably  have  made  a  more  brilliant  figurehead  for  the 
great  State  than  did  either  the  provincial  Cleveland  or 
his  provincial  successor  Hill. 

For  Calvert's  enterprising  spirit  might  not  have  over- 
looked, as  they  did,  the  glory  and  power  to  be  reaped 
through  holding  a  World's  Fair  in  New  York  on  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  inauguration  in  that  city 
in  1789  of  the  First  President  of  the  United  States. 


4i6  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

It  was  the  most  august  oi  the  great  cycle  of  American 
centennials,  and  a  governor's  message  from  Mr.  Cleve- 
land betvi^een  1882  and  1885  would  doubtless  have  roused 
the  Metropolis  to  the  measure  of  this  centennial  oppor- 
tunity for  the  Union,  for  the  State  and  for  Herself.  Mr. 
Depew  said  once  that,  judging  from  the  experiences  of 
Paris,  a  World's  Fair  in  New  York  would  cause  the  ex- 
penditure there  of  three  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  and 
leave  deposited  in  her  banks  fully  sixty  millions. 

So  little  does  it  "  pay,"  even  from  a  "  mere  money  " 
point  of  view,  to  put  small  men  into  great  positions,  that 
in  1890  the  master  minds  of  Chicago  stepped  in  and  car- 
ried off  the  prize  of  the  Columbian  Exposition  from  under 
the  very  grasp  of  unready  Gotham,  and  thus  by  one  mighty 
effort  lifted  their  city  into  a  metropolitan  rival  such  as 
otherwise  she  might  not  have  become   for  a  generation. 

The  Empire  State  of  New  York  had,  therefore,  nothing 
for  which  to  thank  Mr.  Cleveland  and  make  him  Presi- 
dent above  the  many  forgotten  governors  who  had  pre- 
ceded him. 

But  the  empire  city  of  New  York,  besides  his  unfor- 
tunate World's  Fair  negation,  actually  owed  him  a  fear- 
ful affirmative  grudge  for  the  annihilation  of  American- 
ism itself  within  her  boundaries. 

For  the  political  genius  of  England  and  America,  the 
soul,  the  essence  of  "  self  "  government,  of  "  free  "  insti- 
tutions, always  has  been  and  only  can  be  embodied  in  a 
legislative  council  chosen  by  the  voters  of  that  council's 
jurisdiction,  and  in  an  executive  who  is  practically  the 
servant  of  the  council  so  chosen. 

Yet  the  one  memorable  act  of  Mr.  Cleveland  while 
governor  was  his  signing  of  the  "  Mayoralty  Responsi- 
bility "  bill,  which  took  away  from  the  City  Council  of 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  417 

New  York  the  power  of  appointing  and  confirming  to  city 
office,  and  vested  it  exclusively  in  the  mayor. 

"  Jefferson  "  was  always  and  ever  in  Mr.  Cleveland's 
mouth,  but  of  course  nothing  could  be  more  retrogade, 
less  American,  above  all,  less  according  to  Jeiferson,  than 
this  return  to  European  paternalism.  It  was  simply  to 
create  a  one-man  power  and  hand  the  metropolis  bodily 
over  to  it. 

On  account  of  the  notorious  corruption  and  incom- 
petency of  the  Irish  aldermen  who  had  so  long  been  a 
majority  in  the  City  Council  of  New  York,  this  vital  blow 
at  representative  institutions  was  clamored  for  by  the 
same  "  Independent "  press  whose  support  had  given  Mr. 
Cleveland  his   tremendous   majority    for   governor. 

It  was  carried  through  the  Legislature  by  Theodore 
Roosevelt  and  other  young  and  shallow  politicians  of  both 
parties  on  the  specious  plea,  ''  Give  the  Mayor  the  appoint- 
ing power  to  all  the  Departments,  and  then  hold  him 
responsible." 

But  to  whom  will  he  be  responsible? 

Clearly  and  only  to  the  men  who  put  him  in,  as  the 
experience  of  New  York  signally  proves. 

In  1888,  the  New  York  Tammany  machine  elected  as 
mayor  one  of  the  machine  leaders,  in  1890  re-elected  him 
and  in  1892  again  put  in  one  of  her  own  "  grand  sachems." 
In  reward,  these  men  confided  every  Department  of  their 
great  charge  without  exception — Police,  Streets,  Parks, 
Public  Works,  Judiciary,  Docks,  Schools,  Charities  and 
Corrections — to  "  Tammany,"  which  is  New  York  for 
"  Catholic  "  Irish.  The  cost  of  running  the  then  city  of 
New  York  was  as  great  as  the  cost  of  governing  half  the 
States  of  the  Union.  The  taxes  to  meet  this  cost  were 
practically  paid  by  non-Catholics.     For  many  years  they 


4i: 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


were  practically  pocketed  by  Catholic-Irish  officials, 
judges,  contractors,  school-teachers,  school  trustees, 
policemen  and  city  employes,  sprinkled  with  a  few  Ger- 
mans and  Jews  in  the  upper  ranks  and  a  like  proportion 
of  Italians  in  the  lower,  and  not  even  the  equivalent  of 
tolerable  government,  of  tolerable  teaching  or  of  tolerable 
street-cleaning  was  rendered  for  them.  The  best  authori- 
ties estimated  that  five  millions  of  the  city  money  were 
annually  stolen  outright,  and  five  millions  more  looted-in 
by  every  form  of  bribery  and  blackmail. 

If  this  Irish  Tammany  had  been  in  the  numerical  ma- 
jority in  the  city  of  New  York — since  the  basic  principle 
of  the  American  polity  is  the  "  rule  of  the  majority  " — the 
remaining  New  Yorkers,  suffer  how  they  might,  would 
have  had  no  political  right  to  complain.  But  the  Irish 
have  always  been  a  minority  in  the  American  metropolis — 
the  utmost  voting  strength  of  themselves  and  thtir  allies 
not  exceeding  two-fifths.  Thus,  in  the  face  of  the  prin- 
ciple which  is  the  life-breath  of  American  political  exist- 
ence, the  greatest  American  city  was  usually  ruled  by  a 
minority,  and,  worse  still,  by  such  a  minority  as  had  never 
before  been  a  governing  power  since  the  world  began. 

In  other  times  or  races,  when  we  find  a  population 
ruled  by  a  minority,  it  is  a  minority  which  embodies  the 
organized  wealth,  or  intelligence,  or  energy  of  the  popu- 
lation— or  of  all  three. 

The  old  city  of  New  York  for  the  greater  part  of 
twenty-five  years  allowed  itself  to  be  mastered  and  plun- 
dered by  a  largely  foreign-born  minority  which  was  the 
ignorance,  the  self-indulgence  and  the  poverty  of  the 
population  welded  into  a  political  solidarity  by  its  com- 
mon membership  in  the  Catholic  Church ;  and  the  head  of 
this  solidarity  was  naturally  the  Irishman ;  first,  because 


NKIV    Y'ORR':   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY 


419 


intellectually  he  is  of  all  men  the  most  abject  devotee  of 
that  church;  second,  because  he  was  first  on  the  ground; 
third,  because  he  spoke  the  language;  fourth,  because 
"  something  for  nothing  "  is  the  motive  force  of  his  race ; 
fifth,  because  he  loves  to  intrigue  for  office,  and  to  boss, 
bully  and  plunder  in  office  better  than  to  work. 

In  the  Forum,  in  1890,  the  Hon.  Andrew  D.  White  de- 
clared that  one  must  travel  as  far  as  Constantinople  to 
find  a  city  so  misgoverned  as  New  York.  Six  months  be- 
fore the  anti-Tammany  uprising  of  1894,  the  indignant 
leader  of  that  uprising,  Dr.  Parkhurst,  declared  before 
the   Baptist  Social   Union : 

There  is  no  city  administration  on  the  face  of  the  globe  so 
thoroughly  rotten  as  ours.  I  have  not  been  able  to  strike  one  health- 
ful influence  in  it.  There  is  nothing  there  to  regenerate.  Our  only 
hope  is  its  utter  displacement.  Tammany  Ilali  is  the  historic  im- 
personation of  the  Evil  One.  I  wish  I  had  time  to  enter  into  the 
details  of  the  crookedness  and  the  knavery  which  are  the  stock  in 
trade  of  our  city  administration.  An  instance  was  brought  to  my 
knowledge  this  afternoon  by  a  woman  who  had  been  suffering  under 
the  malicious,  foul  and  damnable  abuse  she  has  experienced  from  the 
hand  of  a  man  prominently  associated  with  the  District  Attorney's 
office.  We  are  ground  under  the  nasty  tyranny  of  these  men.  It  is 
the  most  humiliating  posture  conceivable.  We  are  ground  under  the 
feet  of  these  men,  who,  if  the  actions  of  their  lives  were  known, 
would  not  be  tolerated  in  respectable  houses. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  paternal  mayoralty  bills 
of  1884  had  made  Tammany  more  absolute  when  in  office 
than  before,  and  far  more  difficult  to  dislodge,  the  tri- 
umphant New  York  reformers  of  1894-95,  in  order  to 
enable  the  reform  mayor,  William  L.  Strong,  to  oust  as 
many  Tammany  appointees  as  possible,  got  the  Legisla- 
ture to  endow  him  with  the  power  not  only  to  appoint  the 


420  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

heads  of  all  the  city  departments,  but  also  to  remove 
them. 

Thus  the  Mayor  of  New  York,  within  the  limits  of  his 
great  jurisdiction,  became  an  absolute  political  despot — a 
little  czar,  and  when  in  1896  the  existing  city  was  con- 
solidated with  many  surrounding  cities  and  villages  into 
the  Greater  New  York,  the  charter  which  was  drawn  up 
and  adopted  for  the  hugely  expanded  municipality,  still 
clung  to  and  provided  for  this  towering  supremacy  of  the 
Mayor.  The  dreadful  four  years  of  corruption  and  de- 
cadence under  the  Tammany  tool  who  first  ruled  the 
Greater  City  was  but  the  of-course  result  of  this  baleful 
anti-American  principle ;  yet  a  number  of  our  other  Irish- 
ridden  cities  have  since  followed  this  czar-mayor  lead  of 
the  sea-board  metropolis  simply  because,  as  a  college  presi- 
dent once  said  from  the  platform,*  "  What  New  York 
does,  all  do." 

The  result  of  this  movement,  should  it  become  a  na- 
tional one,  it  is  not  difficult  to  foresee.  But  as  I  have 
said  before,  the  inspiration  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  and 
that  with  which  he  so  potently  moulded  the  American 
Republic,  was  that  the  "  best  government  is  that  which 
governs  least."  How  then  can  we  reconcile  it  with  intel- 
ligent Jeffersonian  statesmanship  that  in  1884  Governor 
Cleveland,  a  professed  follower  of  Jefferson,  should  have 
signed  a  one-man-power  mayoralty  bill  so  totally  opposed 
to  the  life  teaching  of  that  great  political  genius?  To 
me  it  seems  witheringly  to  dispose  of  any  pretensions  of 
Mr.  Cleveland  and  his  supporters  to  even  the  A.  B.  C.  of 
Jefifersonian  statesmanship. 

*  President  Gilman  of  Johns  Hopkins  University. 


CHAPTER  LIL 

A  PRESIDENTIAL   NOMINATION. 

Whatever  be  the  rank  in  statesmanship  to  be  accorded 
by  history  to  the  "  man  from  Buffalo,"  as  Governor  of  the 
State  of  New  York  so  well  did  he  fulfil  the  hopes  of  the 
party  managers  and  editors  who  had  placed  him  in  power 
that  all  the  newspapers  under  their  control  began  giving 
the  rest  of  the  Union  pretty  clearly  to  understand  that 
since  the  next  presidency  hung  on  the  vote  of  the  State 
of  New  York,  that  great  State  would  neither  nominate 
nor  work  for  any  Democrat  whatsoever  save  her  own 
trusted  Executive. 

From  every  corner  of  the  nation  the  Democratic  press 
protested  that  a  candidate  with  a  national  reputation 
would  be  more  acceptible  to  the  party  than  this  little- 
known  provincial.  So  far  as  the  national  eye  could  dis- 
cern, '■  Grover  Cleveland  "  was  no  better  than  any  other 
John  Doe  or  Richard  Roe  who  might  have  served  some 
city  as  mayor  or  some  State  as  governor.  In  fact,  the 
editor  of  the  Louisville  Courier,  the  influential  Henry 
Watterson,  even  said  that  "to  nominate  Mr.  Cleveland 
would  be  the  height  of  tomfoolery."  Nevertheless,  the 
refrain  of  these  protests  always  was,  "  H  New  York  must 
have  Cleveland,  since  we  cah*t  win  without  New  York, 
Cleveland  we  will  have  to  take." 

But  by  signing  the  czar-mayoralty  bills,  aimed  directly 


42  2  A-J^tr    VO/HA':  A    SyMPHOXIC   STUDY. 


at  the  Irish  Tammany  aldermen  of  New  York,  Governor 
Cleveland  had  roused  the  resentment  of  Tammany  Hall 
and  all  its  State  affiliations;  besides  which,  he  was  the 
coming  candidate  of  Tammany's  special  and  deadly  ene- 
mies, the  Godkin  Civil  Service  Reformers.  For  Tam- 
many Hall  to  accept  and  to  work  for  Grover  Cleveland 
as  President  would  be,  in  the  judgment  of  its  leaders,  to 
court   political   death    indeed. 

Consequently,  when  the  Democratic  State  Convention 
met  to  elect  and  ''  instruct  "  delegates  to  the  Democratic 
Presidential  Convention  which  was  to  assemble  in  Chi- 
cago the  coming  July,  "  Cleveland  *'  and  **  anti-Cleveland  " 
factions  at  once  declared  themselves.  Both  were  so  strong 
that  neither  ventured  to  force  a  vote,  and  the  body  ad- 
journed after  electing  seventy-two  delegates  to  the 
Chicago  Convention,  and  pledging  them  to  the  "  unit-rule." 
That  is,  they  were  all  to  vote  for  the  same  man,  but  who 
this  should  be  they  were  to  decide  when  they  met  again 
in  caucus  in  Chicago  the  day  before  the  opening  of  the 
presidential  convention. 

The  Tammany  managers,  as  they  afterward  admitted, 
did  this  because  they  thought  themselves  sure  of  a  ma- 
jority; the  Cleveland  managers  because  they  were  deter- 
mined to  have  it.  The  latter  succeeded.  For  in  the  in- 
terim Calvert  and  his  co-workers  quietly  secured  every 
doubtful  mind  of  the  delegation  who  could  be  won  over. 
When  they  all  met  in  Chicago  the  Cleveland  advocates 
proved  to  be  in  the  majority,  and  though  the  Tammany 
Tiger  "  roared  his  protests,"  they  held  him  hard  and  fast 
under  the  previously  agreed  unit-rule.  With  their  dis- 
gusted boss,  John  Kelly,  and  their  rebellious  orator, 
Bourke  Cockran,  the  "  wearers  of  the  green  "  were  forced 
to  take  their  seats  in  the  Convention  pledged  to  vote  for 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  423 

the  man  they  dreaded  (though,  as  was  afterwards  proved, 
quite  unnecessarily),  "first,  last  and  all  the  time." 

It  was  a  representative  assemblage — that  vast  Demo- 
cratic gathering.  Most  of  the  great  names  of  the  party 
were  among  the  delegates  or  in  the  monster  surrounding 
audience — the  wise  statesmen,  the  experienced  leaders, 
the  devoted  patriots — with  hearts  aching  and  yearning 
over  their  country,  perhaps  throbbing — as  how  should 
they  not? — with  unspoken  hopes  that  their  own  deep  love 
and  service  for  her  might  be  remembered  hy  her;  and 
elbowing,  nay,  swamping  them,  the  crowds  of  mere  par- 
tisans and  "  workers  " — pupils,  many  of  them,  of  the  Sa- 
loon and  the  Scarlet  Woman,  and  bent  as  earnestly  upon 
a  personal  "  high  old  time "  in  the  great  city  as  upon 
nominating  a  man  that  would  "  win." 

The  spokesmen  of  the  various  State  delegations  pre- 
sented with  all  their  eloquence  the  claims  of  their  re- 
spective candidates.  The  noblest  Roman  of  them  all,  the 
beloved  and  trusted  and  famous  ex-senator,  Allan  G. 
Thurman  of  Ohio,  who,  as  the  New  York  Times  once 
declared,  "  for  years  after  the  Civil  War  bore  in  Congress 
upon  his  single  shoulder  the  whole  burden  "  of  the  broken 
and  discredited  Democratic  Party,  and  who  far  more  than 
any  other  man  had  won  again  the  confidence  of  the  nation 
toward  that  party, — this  large  and  illustrious  spirit  was 
evidently  the  favorite  of  the  occasion. 

In  the  shortest,  but  weightiest,  speech  of  the  Conven- 
tion, Thurman  was  nominated  by  a  delegate  from  Cali- 
fornia as  the  "  lofty  and  intrepid  statesman  who  for  more 
than  twenty  years  has  been  the  boldest  public  advocate 
of  Democratic  doctrine  and  Democratic  principles,"  and 
the  storm  of  enthusiasm  which  greeted  the  honored  name 
seemed  almost  decisive  of  the  candidate. 


424  A'i^AF    YORK:   A    SYMPHONJC  STUDY 


Bitter  lot  to  his  party  and  to  his  country  that  so  splen- 
did a  nomination  could  be  made  and  not  be  ratified !  But 
the  Cleveland  managers,  alas,  had  too  thoroughly  re- 
hearsed their  "  dark  horse  " — "  new  man  " — role.  The 
spokesman  of  the  New  York  delegation,  an  active  Buffalo 
"  worker,"  in  presenting  Cleveland's  name  and  reciting 
his  services  and  virtues,  begged  the  Party  to  give  *'  the 
young  men  "  of  the  country  a  chance  to  enroll  themselves 
under  this  new  banner — *'  fresh  from  the  pure  bosom  of 
the  people." 

The  clever  bit  of  demagoguery  made  a  palpable  hit 
which  the  Hon.  Bourke  Cockran  of  New  York,  Tammany 
representative  of  that  city  to  Congress,  desperately  at- 
tempted to  turn  against  its  object.  Describing  himself 
as  a  delegate  who.  owing  to  the  "  unit-rule  "  of  his  dele- 
gation, could  speak  for  his  convictions  but  could  not  vote 
for  them,  he  cried  on  behalf  of  Thurman : 


I  name  a  man  who  has  never  been  concerned  in  a  single  act  which 
could  be  termed  as  savoring  of  corporate  influence — a  man  whose  hairs 
have  grown  white  in  the  service  of  his  country — who,  as  each  hair 
has  glistened  with  age,  and  as  the  hoary  locks  have  become  more 
numerous  on  his  brow,  has  added  an  additional  page  to  the  glorious 
history  of  our  land — whose  spirit  breathes  out  from  the  statute  books 
of  the  United  States — whose  name  is  a  word  that  will  rally  to  the 
support  of  the  party  all  those  who  desire  to  see  the  country  adminis- 
tered by  one  who  has  some  knowledge  of  the  principles  of  statecraft. 
.  .  .  The  gentleman  who  has  preceded  me  said  a  great  many 
things,  some  of  which  were  true  ;  but  when  he  declared  that  it  was 
necessary  for  the  Democracy  to  turn  their  backs  upon  those  who 
have  long  and  illustrious  lives  to  which  to  point  as  an  argument  for 
the  confidence  of  the  country,  and  that  the  unknown  and  untried 
political  quantities  should  be  selected  as  the  leaders  and  the  guides 
of  this  campaign,  he  said  to  you  what  the  common  sense  of  this  Con- 
vention ought  to  condemn     ,     .     . 


^■£^V    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  425 

It  was  fatal  for  Thurman  that  this  deserved  and  elo- 
quent tribute  came  from  the  Tammany  source  it  did — 
for  though  the  country  as  a  whole  was  ignorant  then,  and 
is  ignorant  still,  that  Tammany  Hall  of  New  York  em- 
bodies all  that  is  foreign  in  birth  and  inimical  in  spirit 
to  Ainerican  civilization,  the  whole  country  was  and  long 
had  been  aware  that  "  Tammany  "  was  synonymous  with 
bossism  and  corruption,  and  was  to  be  suspected  and 
dreaded  accordingly.  A  swift  Wisconsin  politician 
adroitly  seized  and  played  upon  this  dread  in  order  to 
neutralize  the  Cockran  eulogy  of  Thurman.  "In  Wiscon- 
sin," he  shouted,  at  the  end  of  a  plea  for  Cleveland,  "  our 
young  men  love  Cleveland  and  respect  him  for  his  char- 
acter, his  integrity  and  his  iron  will ;  but  most  of  all,"  he 
rang  out,  "they  love  him  for  the  enemies  he  has  made!" 
(/.  e.,  Tammany  Hall.) 

That  settled  the  nomination.  Between  Thurman,  advo- 
cated by  Tammany  and  Cleveland,  hated  by  Tammany, 
who  could  hesitate?  At  once  a  tornado  arose,  swelled, 
roared  throughout  the  mighty  but  shallow  throng,  whirl- 
ing the  Convention  from  its  senses  and  its  base  toward 
the  stubborn  standard  of  the  men  from  New  York.  With 
the  balloting  the  delegations  began  going,  nay,  rushing 
over  to  them  and  shouting  one  after  another  in  the  wild- 
est excitement  their  choice  to  be  ''Cleveland!"  until  the 
New  York  candidate  had  a  majority.  Instantly  came  the 
customary  proposition  to  make  the  choice  unanimous,  and 
with  even  more  than  the  usual  mad  and  frantic  hurrah 
the  then  Governor  of  New  York  was  proclaimed  the 
Democratic  Nominee  to  the  Presidency  of  more  than  fifty 
millions  of  human  beings  ! 

In  the  game  of  politics  the  bold  and  resolute  editors 
and  wire-pullers  of  Governor  Cleveland's  State  had  scored 


426  JVEIV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

a  truly  extraordinary  inning.  Upon  another  act  of  Cal- 
vert's great  world-drama  Time's  solemn  curtain  fell  amid 
tremendous  and  thrilling  jubilation. 

But  what  thought  the  patriots  and  statesmen  about  it 
as  they  dispersed  to  their  various  spheres  to  try  with 
voice  and  pen  to  lift  so  tremendously  above  themselves 
this  political  new-comer,  who  had  done  absolutely  noth- 
ing for  the  nation  and  worse  than  nothing  for  his  State, 
but  who  "  couldn't  steal  "  ? — yes,  "  only  this  and  nothing 
more."  In  their  disappointed  and  disgusted  hearts  did 
they  acknowledge  themselves  what  in  truth  they  were — 
slaves,  held  by  party  claims  to  the  chariot-wheels  of  a 
machine-made  party  puppet? 

Compare  President  Cleveland's  sesquipedalian  lumber- 
ings and  gropings  about  ideas  that  were  rarely  anything 
but  platitudes,  echoes  or  pretenses,  with  the  gentlemen 
and  statesmen  not  only  of  American  history  but  of  his 
own  time — with  Blaine's  magnetic  affluence,  or  Harrison's 
magic  aptness,  or  Hewitt's  lucid  charm ;  with  the  Boan- 
erges blows  of  a  Thurman,  the  scathing  brilliance  of  an  In- 
galls,  or  the  playful  elegance  of  a  Depew — and  "  O  the  pity 
of  it,  Horatio,"  that  the  editors  and  the  politicians  can  so 
fatally  come  between  the  people  and  their  natural  chiefs 
and  can  so  often  bewitch  them  to  exalt  a  Bottom  in  a 
jackass-head  when  a  winged  Oberon  is  standing  by ! 

It  was  not  the  first  time  that  the  noble  Thurman  had 
been  ousted  from  his  rightful  honors  by  the  potency  of 
money  over  the  daily  Press.  In  1876  he  was  the  foremost 
Democrat  of  the  land  and  should  have  had  the  Democratic 
presidential  nomination  instead  of  the  crafty  New  York 
millionaire  lawyer  who  so  subtly  spread  his  nets  to  get 
it.     In  1880  expired  Thurman's  third  term  as  Senator  to 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  427 

Washington  from  Ohio.  Matchless  in  his  own  State  and 
with  few  peers  throughout  the  Union,  people  supposed  he 
would  succeed  himself  as.  a  matter  of  course.  But  a  certain 
Standard  Oil  magnate  wanted  the  position,  and  so  the 
trained  and  luminous  intellect  was  retired  that  the  pluto- 
crat might  be  exalted — the  plutocrat,  be  it  observed,  never 
doing  anything  with  the  dignity  after  he  got  it! 

In  spite  of  this  the  beacon-light  shone  on,  and  in  1884 
Thurman  was  still  the  bright  particular  star  of  his  great 
party,  and  his  party  loved,  trusted  and  wanted  him.  But 
as  we  have  seen,  the  rich  Calvert  of  Buffalo,  with  his 
rich  co-adjutors  Manning  of  Albany  and  Whitney  of  New 
York,  willed  otherwise,  and  so  for  the  third  time  his 
country  was  made  to  turn  her  glorious  veteran  down. 

As   Senator  Ingalls  expressed  it  in  Congress  in   1886: 

The  Democratic  party  was  not  wanting,  when  its  Convention 
assembled  in  Chicago,  in  many  renowned  and  illustrious  characters  ; 
men  who  had  led  the  forlorn  hope  of  its  darkest  and  most  desperate 
days  ;  men  for  whose  character  and  achievements,  for  whose  fame  and 
history  not  only  that  organization,  but  the  countr}',  had  the  profound- 
est  admiration  and  respect.  There  were  Thurman  and  Bayard  and 
Hendricks  and  Tilden  and  McDonald  and  others  perhaps  not  less 
worthy  and  hardly  less  illustrious,  upon  whom  the  mantle  of  that 
great  distinction  might  have  fallen  ;  but  a  man  who  at  the  mature 
age  of  thirty-five  had  abandoned  an  honored  profession  to  become 
the  Sheriff  of  Erie — a  man  also  without  known  opinions  and  destitute 
of  experience  or  training  in  public  affairs — outstripped  them  all  in 
the  race  of  ambition  ;  and  when,  a  little  more  than  a  year  ago,  he 
entered  this  chamber  as  the  President  of  the  United  States,  he  en- 
countered the  curious  scrutiny  of  an  audience  to  whom  he  was  a 
stranger  in  feature  as  in  fame — a  stranger  to  the  leaders  of  his  own 
party  as  well  as  to  the  representatives  of  the  nations  of  the  earth  who 
had  assembled  to  witness  the  solemn  pageant  of  his  inauguration. 


CHAPTER   LIII. 

THE    MINISTERS    AND   THE    MAN. 

The  Democratic  Party  having  put  forward  for  the 
presidency  -  a  nominee  so  purely  local  that  he  couldn't 
possibly  have  made  either  national  mistakes  or  national 
enemies,  its  next  task  was  to  elect  him;  and  in  view  of 
the  grave  charges  against  the  Republican  candidate  in  the 
direction  in  which  the  "  honest "  Cleveland  was  strongest, 
it  looked  at  first  as  if  the  latter  were  destined  to  a  practi- 
cal walk-over. 

To  this  end  his  party  managers  made  a  specially  lucky 
hit  in  their  campaign  watch  word,  "  Public  Office  is  a 
Public  Trust,"  as  supposedly  original  with  the  Demo- 
cratic candidate.  A  campaign  pamphlet  with  Mr.  Cleve- 
land's picture  on  the  cover,  and  beneath  it  the  famous 
words  in  quotation  marks  with  his  name  affixed,  was 
compiled  by  an  ex-newspaperman  who  was  now  the  Gov- 
ernor's private  secretary,  was  distributed  broad-cast  over 
the  country,  and  made  the  tens  of  thousands  of  converts 
to  the  virtuous  "  new  man  "  that  it  was  designed  to  make. 

With  a  line  of  disinterested  patriots  so  long  and  so 
illustrious  as  that  of  the  United  States,  surely  it  is  a 
serious  thing  that  a  bait  capable  of  deceiving  only  the 
ignorant  should  have  been  so  generally  swallowed  by  a 
nation  which  incessantly  boasts  of  its  "  education  "  and 
"  intelligence." 

Nevertheless,    for    so    many    years    has    the    Catholic 


A  EH'    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.         429 

Church,  in  its  determination  that  the  American  people 
shall  know  nothing  definite  about  the  Protestant  Refor- 
mation, stealthily  devoted  its  influence  to  reducing  the 
public-school  study  of  history  to  the  memorizing  of  a  dry 
skeleton  of  merely  "American"  events  and  dates,  that  most 
Americans  are  in  fact  unconscious  of  the  patriots  and 
patriotic  records  not  only  of  the  human  race  in  general, 
but  largely  so  of  their  own  youthful  branch  of  that  race. 
Steeped  in  this  almost  mediaeval  ignorance,  the  discon- 
tented voter  of  1884  seized  with  enthusiasm  upon  the 
"Public  office  is  a  public  trust,  Grover  Cleveland,"  as  in 
very  truth  a  "  new,  novel  and  original  "  political  revela- 
tion, and  staunch  Republicans  in  hosts  were  sadly  resolv- 
ing to  desert  "  the  trickster  and  jobber,  Blaine,"  and  to 
unite  with  the  Democrats  and  Independents  in  securing 
for  this  almost  solitary  honest  citizen  since  the  world 
began  an  overwhelming  national  triumph. 

But  besides  the  Godkin  purists  in  politics  there  were 
some  purists  in  morals — some  "  evangelical  "  ministers 
of  the  gospel  settled  over  churches  in  Buffalo,  who  most 
unexpectedly  chose  to  take  the  view  that  their  "  public 
office  "  was  also  "  a  public  trust  "  for  the  "  benefit  of  the 
people." 

The  faithlessness  of  these  Christian  preachers  in  keep- 
ing silent  as  to  one  side  of  the  character  of  Grover  Cleve- 
land when  he  was  up  for  the  suffrages  of  their  city  as 
Mayor  and  of  their  State  as  Governor  had  now  come 
bitterly  home  to  them. 

For  every  man  has  two  sides — the  side  he  turns  toward 
his  own  sex  and  that  which  he  turns  toward  the  other. 
In  Grover  Cleveland  the  first  of  these,  even  if  common- 
place, was  without  reproach,  and  for  the  second — these 
good  pastors  were   Republicans  in   a  Democratic   State, 


430  NEW    YORK;  4    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  so  long  as  it  was  a  mere  question  of  a  Democratic 
mayor  or  governor  more  or  less,  their  attitude  had  been 
the  usual  shirking,  touch-me-not  clergyman's  attitude  to- 
ward the  great  cancer  of  the  world — ''  My  soul,  come  thou 
not  into  his  secret." 

Now,  however,  that  this  two-sided  personage  was  nomi- 
nated for  President  of  the  entire  country,  and  with  every 
prospect  of  winning,  they  were  dismayed. 

Leaving  out  the  State  of  New  York,  the  Union  was 
equally  divided  between  Blaine  and  Cleveland.  New  York 
ther».held  the  balance  of  power.  She  was  the  real  battle- 
ground of  the  campaign.  As  she  voted  would  go  the 
election.  The  only  hope  of  carrying  her  for  the  Repub- 
lican Party  in  which  these  pastors  so  fervently  believed 
was  to  keep  the  old  strength  of  the  party  intact.  But 
the  independent  Republicans  had  already  voted  for  Cleve- 
land as  governor,  and  they  were  about  to  hold  a  con- 
vention of  their  own  in  New  York  City  to  second  his 
nomination  for  president.  Should  they  do  this,  and  thus 
divide  their  party,  it  was  equivalent  to  a  Democratic 
election. 

What  if  the  Buffalo  ministers  should  appeal  con- 
fidentially to  these  good,  virtuous  men  against  the  Demo- 
cratic candidate? 

It  was  the  only  chance  for  the  Republican  Party,  and 
the  ministers  decided  to  try  it. 

As  we  have  seen,  Mr.  Godkin  of  the  Nation  and  Even- 
ing Post  was  the  chief  leader  for  Civil  Service  reform; 
but  a  very  strong  and  potent  second  was  George  William 
Curtis,  author,  orator  and  editor  also  of  Harper's  Weekly, 
and  this  gifted  and  accomplished  man  was  perhaps  our 
most  popular  exponent  of  everything  purest,  sweetest, 
highest  and  best  in  American  citizenship. 


NEW    YORK;   A    SYMPHOXIC   STUDY.  431 

Very  few  were  aware  that  late  in  the  sixties  an  anony- 
mous "  gentleman  "  of  this  Republic  had  written  a  book 
in  defence  of  polygamy,  and  that  in  a  preface  over  his 
own  name  George  William  Curtis  had  commended  his 
facts  and  his  arguments  to  the  "  thoughtful  reader  "  as 
worthy  of  serious  attention. 

It  is  of  course  impossible  that  a  moralist  who  could 
take  such  a  position,  even  speculatively,  should  be  uncom- 
promising on  the  Old  Testament  basic  truth  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  sexes — "  they  twain  shall  be  one  flesh  " — and 
its  New  Testament  corollary  of  "chastity"  equally  for  man 
and  woman. 

Moreover,  Mr.  Curtis,  like  Mr.  Godkin  and  their  fol- 
lowing generally,  belonged  to  the  sea-board  aristocracy 
as  developed  by  the  agnostic  and  materialistic  Harvard 
University  of  President  Eliot,  by  the  English  club-system 
of  the  Atlantic  cities,  and  by  the  incessant  travel  and  resi- 
dence abroad  of  city-bred  Americans. 

The  able  professor  of  Political  and  Social  Sciences  at 
Yale  *  has  said  in  his  little  work,  "  What  Social  Classes 
Owe  Each  Other  " — "  There  are  two  chief  things  with 
which  government  has  to  deal.  They  are  the  property 
of  men  and  the  honor  of  women.  These  it  has  to  de- 
fend against  crime.  .  Aristocrats  have  always  had 
their  class  vices  and  their  class  virtues.  They  have  al- 
ways been,  as  a  class,  chargeable  with  licentiousness  and 
gambling.  They  have,  however,  as  a  class  despised  lying 
and  stealing.  .  .  .  The  middle  class  has  always  ab- 
horred gambling  and  licentiousness,  but  it  has  not  always 
been  strict  about  truth  and  pecuniary  fidelity." 

If  these  generalizations  be  true,  the  Buffalo  ministers 

*  Professor  William  Graham  Sumner, 


432  A'ii^    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

should  have  expected  precisely  what  they  got  as  the  result 
of  their  appeal  to  the  Independent  Convention. 

Before  that  body  met,  a  committee  from  the  Clerical 
Association  of  Buffalo  laid  before  George  William  Curtis 
and  his  associates  a  private  "  memorial,"  in  which  they 
besought  the  Independents,  as  fellow-Republicans  by 
whom  they  had  a  right  to  be  heard,  and  on  the  basis  not 
of  rumors  but  of  positive  statements  by  reliable  witnesses, 
"  not  to  second  the  presidential  candidacy  of  a  man  whose 
moral  record  throughout  his  manhood  life  was  peculiarly 
indefensible." 

Poor  lambs!  Little  did  they  realize  the  exigencies  of 
**  reform  "  politics  in  the  Godkin  sense. 

The  ministerial  remonstrance  could  not  have  been  re- 
ceived with  more  contempt  by  the  cultivated,  "  high- 
toned  "  and  high-placed  Independents  had  it  been  the  sen- 
timental outbreak  of  so  many  boarding-school  misses.  In 
the  choice  English  parlance  of  these  thorough  men  of  the 
world,  it  was  so  much  "  rot."  Civil  Service  Reform  was 
the  only  thing  that  could  save  the  nation,  and  Grover 
Cleveland  was  the  only  man  who  could  be  trusted  to 
bring  it  in.  The  Republican  candidate  stood  charged 
when  in  Congress  with  bribery  and  corruption.  True 
that  the  charge  could  not  be  proved,  but  neither  could  it 
be  disproved.  A  comic  paper  had  caricatured  Blaine  as 
a  "  tatooed  man,"  and  what  a  "  spoilsman  "  was  he  sure 
to  prove  if  elected  President !  Only  the  brave  and  "  hon- 
est "  Cleveland  would  stand  impregnably  on  and  for  Civil 
Service  Reform. 

And  so  the  Independents,  with  the  preux  chevalier  of 
New  York,  George  William  Curtis,  at  their  head,  not 
ignorantly,  but  knowingly,  went  before  their  country  with 
an  ex-hangman  and  a  free  liver  as  their  standard-bearer, 


NEiV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  433 

and  on  that  standard  the  effrontery  of  these  words :  "  The 
paramount  issue  of  the  Presidential  Election  of  this  year 
IS  moral  rather  than  political." 

All  over  the  land  intelligent  Democrats,  little  guessing 
at  the  true  inwardness  of  the  nomination,  were  surprised 
at  this  exaltation  of  the  unknown  over  the  known,  of  the 
untried  over  the  tried.  One  such  asked  a  very  active  and 
cultivated  Independent  and  Civil  Service  Reformer: 
"  Why,  on  your  own  Civil  Service  principles,  did  you 
take  a  comparative  nobody  like  Cleveland  instead  of  one 
of  the  trained  and  acknowledged  statesmen  of  the  Demo- 
cratic Party?  You  protest  against  even  the  humblest 
office  being  granted  except  to  the  thoroughly  qualified, 
and  you  nominate  to  the  greatest  and  most  difficult  a  man 
almost  absurdly  without   claim   to   such   a   position." 

"  Oh,"  was  the  answer,  "  we  Independents  have  already 
voted  for  Cleveland  for  Governor,  you  know,  and  it  will 
be  easier  to  vote  for  him  as  President  than  for  any  of 
the  Democrats  we  have  opposed  so  long." 

George  Sand  once  said  that  '*  pretenders  are  always 
lavish  in  promises,"  and  when  in  his  letter  accepting  the 
presidential  nomination  the  New  Man  declared  he  "  recog- 
nized a  most  serious  danger  in  the  eligibility  of  the  Presi- 
dent for  re-election,"  and  even  suggested  "  an  amendment 
to  the  Constitution  disqualifying  the  President  from  re- 
election," the  Independents  were  more  sure  than  ever 
that  they  had  got  hold  of  a  paragon  such  as  American 
history  had  never  yet  boasted.  The  "  rascals  "  were  in- 
deed going  to  be  turned  out  and  all  their  long-entrenched 
"  corruption  "  exposed ! 


CHAPTER   LIV.  ' 


A    PRESIDENTIAL    CAMPAIGN. 


The  confidential  protest  of  the  Buffalo  ministers  to  the 
Independent  Convention  had  ignominously  failed,  and 
their  "  sacred  profession  "  would  probably  have  been  as 
conspicuous  by  its  absence  from  the  ensuing  presidential 
campaign  as  from  all  those  that  had  gone  before  it,  had 
not  several  inland  newspapers,  two  of  them  Democratic, 
none  of  them  Republican,  seen  fit  to  publish  the  social 
record  of  the  Democratic  candidate  as  a  choice  bit  of 
journalistic  "  sensation." 

If  his  Independent  champions  had  now  been  politic 
enough  to  drop  their  personal  crusade  against  the  Repub- 
lican candidate,  the  great  easy-going  public  would  doubt- 
less have  concluded  that  the  accusations  on  both  sides 
were  but  the  usual  campaign  slanders,  which  if  read  by 
loyal  partisans  one  moment  were  very  properly  forgotten 
the  next. 

In  fact,  we  Americans  have  such  absolute  confidence 
in  the  universal  lying  of  our  newspapers  that  we  each 
generally  believe  about  every  character  mentioned  in  them 
simply  what  we  each  want  to  believe. 

But  as  the  Independent  "  moral "  javelin  continued 
daily  to  be  hurled  at  Mr.  Blaine,  though  the  evidence 
against  him  was  purely  inferential,  the  devotees  of  that 
brilliant  and  beloved  leader  naturally  felt  that  since  per- 
sonal character  and  not  political  principle  was  being  made 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  435 

the  pivot  of  the  struggle  by  the  Godkin  following,  it  had 
become  necessary  to  show  that  the  Democratic  pot  had 
better  not  call  the  Republican  kettle  "  black." 

An  old  and  standard  Republican  daily,  the  Boston 
Journal,  sent  a  reporter  to  interview  one  of  the  Buffalo 
protesting  ministers  regarding  the  now  broadcast  Cleve- 
land scandal,  and  the  reverend  gentleman  gave  his  name 
to  the  paper  as  evidence  of  his  own  belief  in  its  truth. 

A  revolting  charge  from  a  pastor  in  good  standing  of 
the  great  Baptist  communion  fell  like  a  bombshell  into 
the  moral  and  political  arena. 

The  South,  being  solidly  Democratic,  knew  nothing 
about  it,  for  their  papers  took  care  not  to  mention  it.  But 
the  North  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  was  in  a  fer- 
ment. Clergymen  and  religious  journals  of  all  denomi- 
nations except  the  Episcopal,  came  out  denouncing  the 
candidacy  of  Mr.  Cleveland  as  an  affront  to  Christianity 
and  to  the  moral  standards  of  society.  Among  them  were 
such  high  scholars  and  leaders  as  Dr.  Howard  Crosby 
and  Dr.  Richard  Storrs  of  the  Presbyterian,  Dr.  Edward 
Everett  Hale  of  the  Unitarian  and  Bishop  Spalding  of 
the  Catholic  Church.  Thousands  felt  that  Cleveland's 
name  should  be  withdrawn.  Tens  of  thousands  hoped 
that  a  public  uprising  would  nominate  a  third  candidate. 

The  great  anti-Tammany  preacher,  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  one  of  the  chief  creators  of  the  Republican 
Party,  but  who,  the  negroes  being  freed,  had  come  round 
to  the  Democratic  doctrines  of  Local  Self-Government 
and  Unfettered  Commerce,  and  who  was  now  also  an 
ardent  Civil  Service  reformer — this  splendid  but  unstable 
genius,  when  he  first  heard  the  deplorable  tale,  voiced  a 
wide  popular  sentiment  when  he  declared  to  an  inter- 
viewer :   "  The  President  of  the  United   States  not  only 


436  NEIV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

administers  the  affairs  of  the  government,  but  he  also  be- 
comes a  model  for  the  young  men  of  the  land,  and  we 
must  see  to  it  that  he  is  every  way  clean.  He  might  not 
give  any  the  less  a  clean  administration,  but  the  precedent 
of  such  a  man  in  the  presidential  chair  would  not  alone 
be    harmful    but    positively   demoralizing," 

The  Irish  leader  of  the  Independents,  however,  did  not 
share  the  misgivings  of  his  reverend  and  very  eminent 
follower.  In  Mr.  Godkin's  view,  fatal  indeed  would  it 
be  to  that  Civil  Service  Reform  which  alone  could  save 
the  country  to  relinquish  the  man  who,  if  elected,  was 
certain  to  make  it  the  special  feature  of  his  administra- 
tion. True,  Mr.  Cleveland's  moral  record  could  not  be 
denied,  but  it  could  easily  be  made  to  appear  of  no  real 
importance.  It  was  only  necessary,  first,  to  repudiate 
the  accepted  standards,  and,  second,  to  maintain  that  no 
one  had  ever  observed  them. 

No  matter  that  the  founders  of  Christian  civilization, 
speaking,  so  they  claimed,  by  divine  command,  and  men- 
tioning no  other  moral  virtue,  had  demanded  Chastity  as 
the  especial  and  indispensable  mark  of  the  Christian — of 
the  anti-pagan !  * 

No  matter  that  for  a  hundred  years  American  women 
had  fondly  and  proudly  trusted  in  Washington  as  having 
walked  in  this  "law  of  God"  with  a  "perfect  heart"  as 
he  had  in  every  other. 

Let  the  Sex-Foundation  of  Christendom  sink  out  of 
sight — let  Patriotism,  which  is  love  of  country  as  identi- 
fied with  reverence  for  its  Fathers,  collapse  into  a  sneer, 
if  only  a  supposed  Civil  Service  Reformer,  no  matter  how 
obscure,  ignorant  and  reprehensible,  could  thereby  be 
elected  to  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States ! 

•  AcU  XT.  27,  28,  29. 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  437 

For  the  Evening  Post,  in  an  editorial  at  once  the  most 
memorable  and  the  most  infamous  ever  printed  on  this 
continent,  having  been  called  on  by  the  Boston  Journal 
to  keep  its  promise  "  not  to  support  a  libertine  and  a 
profligate  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency  of  the  United 
States  " — instead  of  keeping  its  promise,  first  admitted  the 
charges,  and  then  declared  itself — 

.  .  .  shocked  and  amazed  to  hear  that  there  are  scores  of 
clergymen  all  over  the  country  advising  people  who  care  for  morality 
to  choose  the  trickster  and  jobber  because  he  is  chaste,  before  the 
honest  man,  faithful  to  every  public  trust,  because  he  has  been  weak 
before  a  passion  of  which  everybody  knows  the  force. 

.  .  .  Cleveland's  virtues  are  those  which  bind  human  society 
together,  and  in  which  states  are  founded  and  maintained.  There 
has  been  no  great  benefactor  of  the  human  race  who  has  not  been 
truthful,  faithful  to  his  trusts,  disinterested,  self-denying.  There  are 
very  few  who  have  been  chaste.  Blaine's  vices  are  those  by  which 
governments  are  overthrown,  states  brought  to  naught,  and  the 
haunts  of  commerce  turned  into  dens  of  thieves.  The  standard  by 
which  some  ministers  now  propose  to  exclude  Cleveland  from  high 
place  would  have  prevented  Washington,  Franklin,  Jefferson,  Hamil- 
ton, not  to  go  any  farther,  from  taking  any  prominent  part  in  the 
foundation  of  the  American  republic.  It  would  have  excluded  from 
office  in  England  nearly  every  great  statesman  and  reformer  of  the 
last  hundred  years,  except,  perhaps,  Romilly,  Wilberforce,  and  Glad- 
stone. It  would  have  visited  nearly  every  prominent  politician  in  the 
Republican  party  since  i860  with  popular  odium.  It  would,  had  the 
Democrats  chosen  to  apply  it,  have  defeated  one  Republican  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency  by  charges  worse  by  far  than  Cleveland's, 
in  that  they  added  the  sin  of  broken  vows  to  the  sin  of  incontinence. 

We  are  not  defending  incontinence.  Chastity  is  a  great  virtue, 
but  every  man  knows  in  his  heart  that  it  is  not  the  greatest  of  vir- 
tues, that  offences  against  it  have  often  been  consistent  with  the  pos- 
session of  all  the  qualities  which  ennoble  human  nature  and  dignify 
human  life  and  make  human  progress  possible.  It  ought  to  be 
preached  and  practised  by  every  man  to  the  utmost  of  his  ability,  but 


438  NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

no  one  ought  to  preach  it  with  any  other  motive  than  the  spread  of 
virtue,  and  least  of  all  for  the  purpose,  as  in  the  present  case,  of 
making  some  of  the  basest  of  vices — the  vices  which  sap  every  thing 
that  is  valuable  in  society  and  politics — seem  respectable.  Preaching 
of  this  sort,  at  this  time,  is  cant,  and  cant  in  its  most  loathsome  form, 
for  it  fills  every  household  in  the  land  with  filthy  suggestions  and 
insinuations,  turns  the  press  into  a  common  sewer,  and  converts 
scores  of  editors  into  hypocrites,  who  must  blush  in  secret  over  their 
own  ridiculous  sermons  and  their  simulated  righteousness.     ...    * 

This  Satanic  slander  against  English  and  American 
statesmen  had  no  sooner  crossed  the  water  than  it  was 
sharply  denied  on  behalf  of  the  former  by  the  London 
World. \ 

An  American  journal,  in  defending  Mr.  Cleveland  from  the 
accusations  which  have  been  brought  against  him,  asserts  that  if 
such  '  indiscretions '  are  to  exclude  from  high  ofiice,  '  every  great 
English  statesman  or  reformer  of  the  last  hundred  years  would  have 
been  tabooed,  except  Romilly,  Wilberforce,  and  Gladstone.'  The 
Americans  must  be  singularly  ignorant  of  the  private  lives  of  the  Ejig- 
Hsh  statesmen  and  reformers  of  the  last  century  if  they  can  believe 
such  arrant  nonsense.  There  never  was  even  a  whisper  against  Mr. 
Pitt,  Lord  Grenville,  Mr.  Percival,  Lord  Liverpool,  Lord  Eldon,  Mr. 
Canning,  Lord  Grey,  Lord  Althorp.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord  Russell, 
Lord  Aberdeen,  or  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  are  our  most  prominent 
names  during  the  last  hundred  years.  The  truth  is  that  the  '  great 
English  statesmen  or  reformers '  who  were  sometimes  brought  into 
hot  water  by  their  private  affairs  can  be  counted  on  one's  fingers. 

But  in  this  country,  so  far  as  I  know,  neither  the  press 
nor  the  pulpit  challenged  Mr.  Godkin  for  proofs  against 
the  lofty  dead,  nor  did  Congress  exile  the  foreign  Ther- 
sites  who  had  profaned  the  most  sacred  human  name 
that  Americans  know. 

*  Evening  Post,  August  5,  1884,  and  Nation,  August  9,  1884. 
t  August  27,  1884. 


NEW    YORK     A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  439 

In  fact,  for  so  many  years  the  newspaper  jokers,  taught 
originally  by  Mark  Twain,  had  made  "  George  Washing- 
ton and  his  little  hatchet  "  the  butt  of  their  perennial 
laughter,  that  the  halo  of  almost  adoring  reverence  which 
originally  surrounded  the  Father  of  his  Country  had 
largely  darkened  into  doubt  and  indifference. 

And  on  the  other  hand,  so  congenial  is  it  to  Americans 
to  be  bullied,  that  the  incessant  scoff  and  sneer  of  the 
Nation  and  the  Evening  Post  against  American  politics 
and  politicians  and  their  hardly  concealed  contempt  for 
American  institutions,  had  given  their  Irish  editor  a 
very  high  place  indeed  among  our  simple  selves.  The 
naive  American  mind  was  slow  to  believe  that  any 
man  would  be  so  hard  upon  others  who  was  not  unassail- 
ably  right  himself.  If  Mr.  Godkin — who  from  a  self- 
assumed  pinnacle  of  virtue  had  been  hectoring  us  for 
years — said  so,  it  must  be  so!  The  accusation  was  awful, 
but  from  such  an  authority  its  very  awfulness  guaranteed 
its  truth.  Educated  as  in  this  Republic  we  all  are  to  re- 
spect and  spare  each  other's  feelings  and  prejudices,  what 
decent  American  could  suppose  that  a  responsible  journal- 
ist who  was  accepted  as  peculiarly  responsible  because 
he  posed  and  was  accepted  as  "  a  gentleman  and  a 
scholar,"  could,  even  though  a  foreigner,  stoop  to  the 
century-old  malice  of  an  irresponsible  one,  and  fling  a 
second  time  a  wretched  newspaper  scribbler's  long-for- 
gotten mud  at  a  WASHINGTON  in  order  thereby  to 
whiten  a  Graver  Cleveland? 

If  a  lie  be  only  tremendous  enough,  it  is  sure  to  be 
more  or  less  believed  and  to  spread. 

Various  journals  of  large  circulation  copied  Mr.  God- 
kin's  shocking  defence  of  his  candidate,  and  so  gave  it 
an  immense  circulation — notably  the  then  powerful  New 


440  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

York  Herald,  which  not  only  quoted  it  approvingly,  but 
added  jauntily: 

Adam  was  the  first  man  who  ever  got  into  a  scrape  about  a 
woman,  and  there  have  been  a  great  many  since.  There  have  been 
some  warm-blooded  fellows  ready  to  maintain  that  a  woman  is  the 
only  thing  in  the  world  worth  getting  into  a  scrape  about.  . 
Governor  Cleveland  evidently  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  father 
Adam.     .     .     . 

A  comment  on  the  part  of  the  proprietor  of  the  Herald 
so  appropriate  to  the  man  that  one  is  reminded  of  the 
scene  from  Goethe's  great  drama  wherein  Mephistopheles 
coolly  remarks  to  the  remorseful  Faust  regarding  the 
destruction  of  Margaret: 

"  She  is  not  the  first." 

"Hound!  Execrable  monster!  Not  the  first?  Woe!  Woe! 
By  no  human  soul  is  it  conceivable  that  more  than  one  human 
creature  has  ever  sunk  into  a  depth  of  wretchedness  like  this,  or  that 
the  first,  in  her  deadly  writhing  agony,  should  not  have  atoned  in  the 
sight  of  all-pardoning  Heaven  for  the  guilt  of  all  the  rest ! — The 
misery  of  this  one  harrows  up  my  soul.  Thou  art  grinning  calmly 
over  the  fate  of  thousands  ! " 

So  grinned  Messrs.  Godkin  and  Bennett  and  their  fol- 
lowing of  "  gentlemen "  over  the  fate  of  the  reputable 
saleswoman  ruined  through  the  Sheriff  of  Erie,  deserted 
when  she  became  a  mother,  and  her  hapless  child  placed  in 
a  foundling  asylum.  One  half  of  this  equation  of  human 
sin  was  in  the  depth  of  human  scorn  where  she  belonged. 
The  other  these  reformers  would  endeavor  to  raise  to  the 
utmost  dizzying  height  of  American  prestige,  and  thus 
forever  break  from  the  neck  of  American  manhood  that 
long   too-heavy   yoke   of  honor,   tr^nderness   and   chivalry 


NEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


441 


toward  womanhood  which  in  their  view  the  schoolboy 
sentimentaHsm  of  previous  generations  had  so  foolishly 
forged.  Why  keep  up  the  pretence  of  what  as  a  sex  they 
did  not  believe  and  no  longer  wished  to  practise?  The 
ridiculous  prudery  of  American  morals  and  manners  had 
got  to  go.  Now  was  as  good  a  chance  as  any  to  give  it 
a  final  kick,  and  thus  declare  candidly  to  American 
womanhood  that  American,  like  European  manhood, 
would  not  submit  to  the  moral  standard  which  the  out- 
worn Creed  of  a  discredited  old  Book  had  tried  to  bind 
equally  on  both  sexes,  but  which  was  practically  only 
necessary  for  one ! 


CHAPTER    LV. 


MORE    GODKIN    ETHICS. 


No  one,  therefore,  saying  Mr.  Godkin  nay  in  his  un- 
speakable attack,  and  thus  being  encouraged  in  his  crusade 
against  the  waning  ideals  of  the  nation,  the  foreign  edi- 
tor finished  the  campaign  in  the  spirit  in  which  he  had 
begun  it  by  taking  care  that  from  time  to  time  should 
continue  to  appear  in  his  editorial  and  other  columns 
flings  against  Washington,  against  womanhood  and 
against  the  Christian  ministry  just  often  enough  to  keep 
up  and  deepen  the  impression  he  had  made  by  his  first 
onslaught,   such   as : 

Some  sins,  like  some  sorrows,  are  sacred. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  voters  to  put  as  good  men  as  they  can  get 
in  this  place  (the  presidency)  as  in  all  others — a  perfect  man,  if  pos- 
sible ;  but  government  has  to  go  on  whether  perfect  !ren  can  be  got 
for  office  or  not.  Bad  men  are  often  put  into  all  the  offices,  from  the 
presidency  down,  for  precisely  the  same  reason  that  bad  men  *  are 
admitted  into  the  United  States — viz.,  that  it  cannot  be  helped. 

There  never  has  been  a  man  absolutely  unexceptionable  on 
moral  or  other  grounds  in  the  presidential  chair  ;  there  probably 
never  will  be. 

By  refusing  to  vote  because  there  is  no  candidate  in  the  field 
who  comes  up  to  his  standard,  the  voter  simply  brings  morality  into 
contempt  with  the  plain  people,  who  know  that  there  never  was  and 

*  LiH  Mr.  Godkin,  for  example  ? 


NEli'    YOIiA':   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


443 


probably  never  will  be,  a  ruler  on  whom  the  eye  of  the  lover  of  human 
perfection  could  rest  with  absolute  content. 

O  Father  of  our  Country — who  served  that  country 
without  pay  and  impoverished  and  discomforted  yourself 
and  your  devoted  wife  in  long  homesick  years  of  war  and 
administration  away  from  Mount  Vernon ;  whose  entire 
cost  to  your  countrymen  for  facing  the  serried  might  of 
England  with  the  fitful  resources  of  the  colonies  was  but 
ten  thousand  dollars  a  year;*  who  as  military  leader 
resigned  your  honors  and  slipped  back  among  the  un- 
named masses  only  to  be  forced  forward  in  yet  larger 
grandeur  as  a  political  chief,  because  the  blessings  you 
had  won  for  the  land  were  in  danger  of  being  lost  in  the 
weaker  hands  which  were  administering  them — is  it  pos- 
sible that  in  1884  there  was  not  throughout  that  boundless 
land  one  "  lover  of  human  perfection  "  whose  '*  eye  could 
rest "  on  you  with  such  "  absolute  content "  that  he  could 
take  up  the  gauntlet  flung  down  by  a  pagan  alien  and 
challenge  him  for  proofs,  if  not  at  the  peril  of  his  life, 
of  that  which  is  dearer  than  life — his  character? 

So  far  as  I  am  aware,  there  was  not  on"e;  and  so  the 
Evening  Post  and  Nation  editor  went  on  to  defend  still 
more  venomously  the  Democratic  candidate  by  attacking 
those  who  chiefly  teach  and  who  chiefly  accept  "  chas- 
tity"  as  their  rule  of  life. 

The  Republican  managers  knew  well,  too,  that  this  kind  of  lies 
would  rouse  a  certain  class  of  ministers  who  could  never  be  induced 
to  wade  throug^h  the  details  of  ofiFicial  dishonesty,  and  who  could  not 
understand  them  if  they  tried  .  .  .  and  a  class  of  women  who 
seldom  think  of  a  man  in  any  capacity  but  that  of  a  male  animal. 

*  Even  this  included  the  cost  of  the  secret  service  required  by  the 
general-in-chief. 


444  ^^/^    YORK:  A    S,YM PHONIC  STUDY 


To  these  last,  scholars,  soldiers,  heroes,  statesmen,  are  simply  or 
chiefly  males,  and  their  valor,  wisdom  and  learning  count  for  very 
little  against  their  career  as  males. 

Needless  to  record  that  in  1884  thp  crushed  worm  of 
all  the  ages  did  not  turn  against  the  masculine  scorn  so 
vitriolically  poured  out  any  more  tha7  it  had  against  the 
similar  chivalrous  misrepresentations  of  the  preceding  six 
millenniums.  On  the  contrary,  since  women  generally  pin 
their  political  faith  upon  the  newspapers  patronized  by 
the  men  of  their  families,  even  the  most  intelligent  women- 
readers  of  the  Evening  Post  merely  remarked,  "If  Wash- 
ington was  just  like  other  men,  I  don't  see  how  we  can 
blame  Cleveland,"  and  then  went  enthusiastically  on  to 
side  with  their  college-bred  husbands  and  sons  in  favor 
of  Cleveland's  election.  Nay,  two  white-haired  matrons 
— Mrs.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  Mrs.  Delia  Parnell 
(mother  of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  of  adulterous  mem- 
ory)— actually  went  on  the  platform  to  advocate  the 
national  elevation  of  this — according  to  the  Catholic 
Bishop  Spalding — "  habitual  enemy  of  woman's  virtue." 

A  friend  of  the  writer,  a  devoted  Episcopalian,  wrote 
with  an  agonized  heart  to  the  two  leading  "priests"  (as 
they  now  call  themselves)  of  her  denomination  in  New 
York  city,  both  of  them  Republicans,  imploring  them 
from  the  height  of  their  pastoral  prestige  with  the  rich 
and  the  powerful  to  do  or  say  something  against  this  ter- 
rible candidacy.  In  reply,  one  of  them  "  hoped  that  the 
Church  Congress  which  was  to  meet  in  October  would 
utter  an  appropriate  protest  " — which  of  course  it  did  not 
do  nor  even  thought  of  doing;  the  other  "feared  that 
we  needed  humiliation  for  our  sins,  and  perhaps  were 
being  permitted  to  go  on  until  through  retribution  and 
suffering  we  should  be  brought  back  to  better  things !  " 


NEIV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  445 

Various  influential  divines — notably  the  Right  Reverend 
Bishop  Huntington  of  the  Episcopal,  Dr.  Edward  Mc- 
Glynn  of  the  Catholic  and  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke  of 
the  Unitarian  Church — appealed  to  the  American  people 
to  do  evil  that  good  might  come,  and  to  elect  to  their 
presidency  the  man  too  honest  to  misappropriate  a  dollar 
but  not  too  honest  to  worse  than  beggar  a  woman !  Es- 
pecially did  the  celebrated  Dr.  Beecher  publicly  abandon 
the  moral  ground  he  had  at  first  assumed.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  a  great  audience  he  raised  hand  and  eyes  solemnly 
to  heaven  and  said :  "  Should  Mr.  Cleveland  be  elected, 
I  am  willing  to  stake  my  reputation  and  my  influence  and 
everything  dear  to  me  in  life  that  he  will  make  one  of 
the  best  presidents  we  have  ever  had !  "  Dr.  Beecher 
even  out-Godkined  Godkin  by  reproaching  the  young  men 
of  Brooklyn  because  when  they  went  dissipating  during 
the  campaign  they  called  it  "  spending  the  evening  with 
Cleveland,"  and  he  sent  a  shudder  through  the  com- 
munity by  declaring  that  so  little  right  had  men  to  reject 
Cleveland  for  president  on  account  of  his  moral  record, 
that  "  if  all  the  husbands  in  the  State  of  New  York  who 
were  faithless  to  their  wives  should  vote  for  Cleveland 
he  would  carry  the  State  by  two  hundred  thousand  ma- 
jority." 

In  Buffalo,  the  old  home  of  the  Democratic  candidate, 
the  battle  raged  with  intensity  from  the  top  to  the  bottom 
of  society,  and  if  the  Buffalo  pastors  who  had  secretly 
approached  the  Independents  had  now  manfully  banded 
together  and  in  the  name  of  the  Church  of  Christ  had 
openly  appealed  to  the  American  People,  the  moral  sur- 
render of  the  nation  would  have  been  averted.  But  they 
were  so  dismayed  by  the  blasts  of  denunciation  let  loose 
on  them  from  the  Democratic  and  Independent  press  for 


446  A'EW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"clerical  meddling  in  politics,  etc.,"  that  they  simply 
cowered  and  shrank  back  into  silence — all  but  the  daunt- 
less Baptist,  Pastor  Ball,  who  came  out  a  second  time  in 
the  Boston  Journal,  and  not  only  reiterated  the  original 
accusation,  but  added  worse  to  it. 


CHAPTER  LVI. 

OCTOBER,    1884. 

The  scandal  only  excepted,  everything  favored  Cleve- 
land and  crippled  Blaine  on  their  special  battle-ground  of 
the  great  State  of  New  York.  The  abandoned  Benjamin 
E.  Butler,  in  order  to  keep  himself  before  the  public, 
undertook  to  run  as  that  contradiction  in  terms,  a  "  Pro- 
tection Democratic"  Presidential  Candidate  of  a  *'  Peo- 
ple's Party  "  gotten  up  by  himself  for  this  campaign,  and 
in  his  own  interest  he  came  to  the  pivotal  State  and  ad- 
dressed great  rural  audiences  throughout  its  borders.  His 
New  York  organ  was  the  Sun,  the  most  brilliantly  edited 
sheet  in  the  country,  but  which,  on  the  celebrated  principle 
of  the  devil  always  choosing  the  cleverest  instrument  to 
do  his  work,  was  not  only,  while  pretending  philosophical 
independence,  the  special  organ  of  Tammany  Hall  and 
the  Catholic  Church,  but  also  consistently  lent  itself  to 
any  other  evil  thing  so  it  were  evil  enough.  This  pagan 
Daily  advocated  with  its  hundred  thousand  purchasers 
and  their  families  the  presidential  claims  of  the  man 
whom  years  before  it  had  characterized  as  follows: 

The  life  and  career  of  Ben  Butler  fitly  illustrates  Danton's 
maxim  —  "Audacity,  more  audacity  —  always  audacity."  .  .  . 
Hated  by  some,  condemned  by  many,  and  distrusted  by  all,  this  bad 
man   with  his  crooked  ways,  foul   methods,   distorted  mind  and  wicked 


448  NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

V 

heart,  glories  in  these  moral  deformities,  flaunts  them  constantly 
before  the  public  eye  and  traffics  in  them  as  political  merchandise. 
The  notoriety  which  decency  shrinks  from  he  seeks  as  so  much 
capital  added  to  the  stock  of  ill-fame  that  had  already  made  his  name 
odiously  conspicuous  in  and  out  of  Congress.  Rejoicing  in  his  own 
shame  and  coining  money  from  open  venality,  discarding  any 
pretense  of  principle,  bound  by  no  ties  of  honor,  scoffing  at  religion, 
making  politics  a  trade,  despotic  when  clothed  with  authority, 
cowardly  by  nature,  mercenary  from  habit  and  destitute  of  one  en- 
nobling quality  or  manly  attribute  to  lift  him  up  above  these  charac- 
teristics, he  is  to-day  the  leading  candidate  for  the  highest  honor  in 
enlightened  and  moral  Massachusetts.  To  this  complexion  have  we 
come  at  last.    * 

The  result  of  Butler's  personal  canvas  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  together  with  the  backing  of  the  Sun,  was 
seventeen  thousand  votes,  of  which  so  many  must  have 
been  protection  votes  taken  from  Blaine,  that  after  the 
campaign  the  Sun  found  it  "  very  funny "  that  though 
editorially  it  had  opposed  Cleveland  with  the  most  wither- 
ing contempt,  yet  that  by  influencing  votes  away  from 
Blaine  to  Butler,  itself,  the  Sun,  had  really  elected  him ! 

Besides  the  Butler  defections,  the  Prohibitionists  ran 
their  own  candidate,  St.  John,  and  this  took  twenty-five 
thousand  more  Republican  votes  that  otherwise  would 
have  gone  to  Blaine. 

In  deadly  co-operation  with  these  was  the  revenge  of 
Blaine's  bitter  enemy,  the  powerful  New  York  Republican, 
ex-Senator  Conkling. 

The  "  Man  from  Maine,"  in  spite  of  the  counteracting 
"  rallies  "  and  mass-meetings  on  behalf  of  his  three  rivals, 
had  made  a  personal  progress  through  the  great  Empire 
State,  which  from  beginning  to  end  was  a  wild  and  extra- 
ordinary ovation.     Such   was  the  enthusiasm  for  Blaine 

The  Sun,  June  26,  1873. 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY 


449 


and  the  disaffection  toward  Cleveland,  that  Blaine's  get- 
ting the  needed  New  York  majority  seemed  certain.  But 
in  the  last  fortnight  of  the  campaign,  Conkling's  hundred 
thousand  admirers  throughout  the  State — "  Stalwarts," 
as  they  were  called — received  each  a  circular  urging  that 
the  objections  of  the  Independent  Republicans  to  the 
regular  Republican  candidate  were  unanswerable,  and  that 
"  he  ought  not  to  be  trusted  with  the  presidency."  As  a 
body  the  Stalwarts  said  and  did  nothing  against  their 
party  candidate,  but  at  the  ballot  box  a  fatal  number 
struck  silently  home  by  either  scratching  Blaine's  name 
or  by  voting  for  Cleveland. 

In  spite  of  this  internecine  war  among  the  Republicans 
the  Democratic  managers  were  vividly  alarmed,  for  Blaine 
was  personally  popular  among  the  Irish,  and  the  Tam- 
many managers,  still  resentful  on  account  of  the  nomina- 
tion of  Cleveland,  were  obstinately  declining  to  command 
the  Irish  to  the  party  banner.  A  powerful  New  York 
Democrat  whom  Calvert  and  his  friends  had  ignored, 
afterwards  said :  "  I  came  home  from  Europe  in  the  fall 
and  found  the  Democratic  Party  beaten,  and  I  had  to  take 
off  my  coat  and  go  to  work."  Presumably  at  the  sugges- 
tion of  this  gentleman,  the  vice-presidential  candidate 
himself,  the  able  and  popular  Governor  Hendricks,  was 
sent  for  to  come  his  thousand  miles  from  Indiana  to  in- 
terview and  placate  the  Tamamny  boss,  John  Kelly.  The 
conference  lasted  for  hours,  and  it  was  deep  in  the  night 
when  the  chief  at  last  said :  "  Governor  Hendricks,  for 
your  sake  we  will  do  it.  You  may  go  home  with  my 
assurance  that  Tammany  Hall  will  do  its  duty."  * 

That  the  Republican  Party  should  triumph  for  the 
seventh  consecutive  time  was  not  written.  Even  "  the 
*  Scribners  Magazine,   1895. 


45 o  NEW    YORK:    A    S.YMPIIONIC   STUDY. 

Stars  in  their  courses  fought  against  Sisera."  The  trem- 
bling hearts  of  the  Blaine  managers  were  all  but  permit- 
ting themselves  to  feel  assured  when,  the  very  last  week 
before  the  election,  the  spokesman  of  a  delegation  of 
Protestant  ministers  congratulated  Mr.  Blaine  upon  being 
the  opposition  candidate  "  to  the  party  of  the  three  Rs — 
Rum,  Romanism  and  Rebellion." 

The  ready  parliamentarian  seemed  not  to  hear  the  un- 
lucky remark,  but  the  opposition  press  pounced  upon  it 
with  ecstasy,  trumpeted  it  and  dwelt  upon  it  in  the  hope 
of  bristling  up  the  Irish  Catholics  who  held  the  balance 
of  power;  for  as  the  Irish  voted  so  would  go  that  "  Em- 
pire "  State  which  this  time  was  also  the  "  Umpire " 
State  of  the  Union. 

So  far  from  being  opposed  to  Catholics,  Blaine's  own 
mother  was  one;  his  daughter  married  one  and  became 
one,  and  it  is  probable  that  his  own  inner  sympathy  was 
more  or  less  with  this  grandiose  and  picturesque,  but 
utterly  un-American  legacy  of  pagan  imperial  Rome  to 
the  Christendom  which  succeeded  Rome.  But  of  the 
Irish  mind  the  first  and  foundation  principle  is,  "Not  a 
breath  against  the  Church."  Cards  were  swiftly  printed 
and  widely  distributed  by  the  Catholic  priests  which  quoted 
the  Protestant  speech  about  the  "  three  Rs,"  and  urged 
Catholics  to  vote  against  the  candidate  in  whose  honor  it 
had  been  uttered — so  that  if  the  "  magnetic  Blaine  "  fan- 
cied he  held  fast  the  Irish  heart  he  was  soon  most  drearily 
to  be  undeceived. 

The  November  Tuesday  dawned  that  was  so  big  with 
fate,  and  the  same  evening  the  managers  of  the  two 
great  parties  knew  for  fact  what  beforehand  they  had 
counted  on — namely,  that  leaving  out  New  York,  the 
Union  was  equally  divided. 


NEIV    YORK':   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  451 

And  New  York — the  pivotal  State? 

Ah,  Governor  Cleveland's  enormous  majority  of  1882 
was  so  nearly  or  altogether  wiped  out  that  the  Republi- 
cans were  loudly  claiming  the  great  Democratic  Common- 
wealth ;  nay,  such  was  the  moral  reaction  against  Mr.  E. 
L.  Godkin's  "  honest "  candidate  that  he  was  defeated  in 
the  city  of  Albany  v/here  he  was  Governor,  and  he  was 
also  defeated  in  his  ow^n  county  of  Erie,  in  his  own  city 
of  Buffalo,  in  his  own  ward  of  that  city  and  in  his  own 
election  district  of  his  own  ward  ! 

Very  late  on  the  election  night  Fanny  Howe's  city  offi- 
cial friend,  the  *'  County  "  Democrat,  dropped  into  Fanny's 
flat. 

She  listened  to  his  news  of  the  returns  with  blanching 
cheek.  "  If  Cleveland  is  defeated,"  she  cried.  "  it  will 
kill  Frank  Calvert !  Do  you  really  mean  that  his  hundred 
and  ninety-two  thousand  surplus  of  only  two  years  age 
is  gone — really  and  truly  gone  ?  " 

"  That's  about  the  size  of  it,"  was  the  gloomy  answer. 

"  But,"  insisted  Fanny,  "  it  can't  be  that  the  Republicans 
have  the  true  majority — that  they've  actually  out-votec 
this  great  Democratic  city !  " 

"  Damn  it,  they  claim  too  much  of  this  '  great  Demo- 
cratic city.'  They've  too  many  city  votes  along  with  their 
country  ones." 

"  But  are  you  going  to  admit  it?" 

"  Of  course  we're  going  to  demand  a  recount  of  certain 
districts." 

"  Of  course  you  are !  "  retorted  Fanny.  "  I  can't  see 
what  w'e  Democrats  are  running  the  city  government  for 
if  our  candidate  for  the  presidency  itself  has  got  to  be 
voted  down  under  our  very  noses !  Don't  we  bring  in 
aldermen  and  assemblymen  whenever  we  choose,  and  the 


452  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

V 

Other  side  can't  help  itself,  because,  as  I've  heard  you 
boast  more  than  once,  the  Democrats  have  got  the  police 
and  the  ballot-clerks  and  all  the  rest  of  it?  How  many 
majority  do  we  want?" 

"  What  a  fool's  question,"  growled  the  County  Demo- 
crat. "  A  thousand  would  do  the  business,  Madam 
Fanny,  or  a  hundred,  or  even  one  vote  would  do — pro- 
vided it  was  honest." 

"  *  Honest,'  "  sneered  Fanny.  "  Ha  !  ha !  I  like  that. 
How  *  honest '  were  the  Republicans  when  they  defrauded 
Tilden,  the  rightful  president,  of  his  election  ?  The  boot's 
on  the  other  leg  now.  They  owe  us  a  president,  any- 
how !  " 

"  By  hell,  they  do !  "  cried  the  County  Democrat,  "  and 
they  shall  pay  him,  too !  "  And  Fanny  soon  after  got 
out  her  chafing  dish,  and  with  hot  venison  in  currant 
jelly  and  a  cold  bottle  of  champagne,  speedily  had  him  in 
better  humor. 


,    CHAPTER   LVII. 


COUNTED    IN. 


Among  the  Democratic  "  workers  "  in  the  moral  jungle 
of  the  "  east  side "  lurked  a  youthful  leader  who  had 
graduated  into  manhood  from  the  dens  and  dives  of  the 
Bowery — a  typical  and  finished  specimen  of  the  young 
Irish  "  tough  "  as  evolved  under  the  sinister  combination 
of  the  Catholic  Parochial  School  and  The  American  Ward 
Election   System. 

Chief  even  then  of  a  "  Whyo  "  gang  as  vile  and  wicked 
as  himself,  he  has  since  loomed  into  high  place  and  power 
in  Tammany  Hall,  and  in  the  Reports  of  the  City  Reform 
Club  has  been  catalogued  equally  for  every  crime  known 
to  politics  as  for  every  vice  known  to  morals.  His  special 
field  of  operations  was  the  Eighth  Assembly  District — 
famed  as  "  de  bloody  Ate  " — for  from  this  and  the  ad- 
joining districts  were  elected  or  defeated  candidates  for 
the  State  Legislature,  for  the  City  Council  and  for  the 
City  Judgeships  according  to  orders  from  headquarters — 
yes,  even  to  casting  more  votes,  when  necessary,  than 
there  were  registered  citizens  on  the  polling  lists ! 

But  to  secure  the  co-operation  of  this  young  Irish- 
American  patriot  and  his  friends,  funds  were  needed,  and 
the  New  York  Democratic  campaign  treasury  was  empty. 
Until  a  large  sum  could  be  obtained  from  another  State, 
therefore,  and  placed  where  it  would  "  do  the  most  good," 
the  New  York  City  returns  were  held  back  for  an  "  offi- 


454  ^ElV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


cial  "  recount  in  the  "  doubtful  "  districts — the  country 
elsewhere,  meantime,  being  kept  in  a  maddening  suspense 
which  in  several  localities  almost  rose  to  mob  violence. 

At  last,  after  three  or  four  days  of  agony,  it  was  an- 
nounced that  the  revised  New  York  returns  gave  to  the 
Democratic  candidate — and  chieHy  fronf  the  Eighth  As- 
sembly District — eleven  hundred  and  forty  nine  votes 
over  Blaine — hardly  more  than  a  thousand  votes  in  the 
total  of  more  than  ten  millions  which  had  been  cast;  yet 
these  thousand  fraudulent  votes  in  a  foreign  (and  pre- 
sumably Catholic)  city  district  .availed  to  lift  to  the  head- 
ship of  the  great  Protestant  nation  which  is  one  of  the 
four  great  sovereignties  of  the  globe,  instead  of  the  peo- 
ple's darling — the  forbidding  official ;  instead  of  the 
"  plumed  knight  " — the  ex-sheriff  and  hangman ;  instead 
of  the  ornament  of  Congress — the  plodding  provincial  at- 
torney; instead  of  the  brilliant  and  beneficent  thinker  and 
leader  in  great  world-issues — the  political  poll-parrot  who 
ever  cried  "  Party,"  but  to  save  his  life  could  never  clearly 
define  what  his  party  stood  for;  instead  of  the  family  and 
the  social  idol — the  bar-room  smoker,  the  intimate  of 
"  fast "  men,  the  "  habitual  enemy  of  woman." 

"  When  I  think  of  Grover  Cleveland  as  the  President 
of  the  United  States,"  said,  after  the  election,  a  well- 
known  Buffalo  lawyer  to  his  wife;  "a  man  whom  for 
years  I've  seen  standing  on  the  corners  at  six  o'clock 
ogling  shop-girls — I  think  I  must  be  in  a  dream." 

Yes,  the  adored  Blaine  was  indeed  "  counted  out "  of 
the  mighty  office  !  For  the  similar  unprincipled  slaughter 
of  the  able  Democrat  Tilden  in  1876  on  behalf  of  the 
insignificant  Republican  Hayes,  the  party  of  Jefferson 
had  taken  its  deep  and  dreadful  revenge. 

Blaine  knew  it  at  the  time,  and  years  afterward  the 


NEW    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  455 

impeccable  Evening  Post  calmly  admitted  it  in  its  editorial 
columns !  The  truth  was,  the  stake  was  too  tremendous, 
and  the  New  York  editors  and  capitalists  playing  for  it 
were  too  rich  or  too  ambitious,  or  both,  to  brook  its  loss. 

The  late  Ward  McAllister  recorded  in  the  New  York 
World  that  one  of  the  ablest  men  in  Wall  Street  once 
declared  to  him,  "  Why,  my  dear  fellow,  such  is  the  power 
of  wealth  in  this  country  that  I  assure  you  if  I  willed  to 
the  contrary  you  could  not  reach  your  home  this  night 
in  safety.  Money  is  not  only,  king  in  Wall  Street  and 
in  Congress,  but  in  society.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
equality  among  men.  The  great  financial  minds  and  capi- 
talists rule  this  city — that  is,  they  exercise  all  the  power 
they  care  to  assume,  and  they  direct  the  Legislature  of 
the   State   for  their  own   protection." 

The  nomination  and  election  of  Grover  Cleveland  was 
a  case  in  point  of  the  rule  in  this  country  of  the  "  great 
financial  minds  and  capitalists,"  who  besides  its  mines  and 
manufactures  and  transportation  interests  own  or  con- 
trol its  newspapers.  It  was  the  combined  work  of  the 
rich  editors  and  of  the  rich  men  who  buy  the  .editors ! 

And  so  for  the  third  time  descended  Time's  solemn 
curtain  upon  Frank  Calvert's  momentous  world-drama  — 
descended  amid  joy  and  acclaim  far  wider  and  wilder  and 
more  delirious  than  before — but  mingled  now  with  the 
party  cheers  and  shouts  from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the 
other  was  the  mortal  groan  that  rose,  were  the  burning 
tears  that  fell  over  all  that  this  victory  included  and  im- 
plied ;over  the  thrusting  aside  from  the  helm  of  State  of  the 
great  Republican  Party — over  the  defeat  of  its  passionately- 
loved  leader — and,  far  worse  than  all  to  the  women-watch- 
ers on  the  battlements,  over  the  triumph  of  masculine 
scorn  for  their  sex  with  its  inevitable  forcing  of  woman- 


456         NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 


hood  down  to  a  lower  plane  of  honor,  reverence  and  con- 
sideration in  the  national  future — while  far,  far  above 
them  all  tolled  from  the  dread  Belfry  of  Eternity  the 
"  knell — knell — knell ."  of  the  doomed  party  of  Jefferson ! 

For  when  Grover  Cleveland  took  office  in  1885  there 
were  yet  great  Jeffersonian  Democrats  and  a  great  Jeffer- 
sonian  Party. 

When  he  left  it  in  1897  those  leaders  and  that  party 
had  vanished  forever ! 


CHAPTER    LVIII. 

THE    APEX. 

Calvert's  giant  labor  was  over.  The  supreme  effort 
of  his  long  years  of  strenuous  activity  was  crowned  with 
success.  The  Democratic  Party  was  again  ascendant  in 
the  nation,  with  the  State  of  New  York  in  the  van  of 
the  movement  and  himself  in  the  van  of  the  State  of 
New  York.  The  national  position  toward  which  he  had 
worked  so  long*  was  now  securely  within  his  grasp. 

I  say  "  securely "  because  the  powerful  politicians  in 
the  east  of  the  State  who  with  this  Buffalo  magnate  had 
so  splendidly  generalled  the  great  result,  were  rewarded 
with  high  place  by  the  President  they  had  made,  and  why 
should  he  not  have  proven  equally  grateful  to  his  still 
earlier  friend  and  backer,  especially  since,  like  Manning 
of  Albany  and  Whitney  of  New  York,  Calvert  was  rich? 

For  one  of  the  paradoxical  features  of  the  Cleveland 
cult  was  the  way  its  object  always  talked  for  the  "  peo- 
ple," the  "  working-man  "  and  the  "  wage-earners  "  and 
invariably  acted  with  and  for  the  capitalists.  He  had 
his  reward.  Not  only  did  he  twice  enjoy  the  presidency, 
but  from  an  average  lawyer  with  average  earnings  he 
rose  into  a  capitalist  himself,  and  this  in  twelve  short 
years,  eight  of  which  were  spent  in  an  expensive  office 
upon  a  salary. 

Calvert  then  felt  no  inward  misgiving  as  to  the  public 
honors  that  awaited  him.     But  what  are  public  honors, 


458  NEIV    YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUD  I 


even  if  a  man  attain  them,  without  some  one  with  whom 
they  can  be  openly  shared,  especially  if,  like  Calvert,  he 
have  previously  possessed  both  wife  and  child  and  the 
warm  surrounding  circle  these  generally  bring  with  them  ? 

I  once  heard  a  woman  triumphantly  exclaim,  "  Men 
may  have  everything  else  in  the  world  without  good 
women,  but  they  can't  have  a  home  or  legitimate  children 
without  them !  "  Or,  as  a  New  York  broker  wrote  on 
the  eve  of  his  suicide  a  few  years  ago,  "  To  a  man  of 
birth,  education  and  refinement,  three  things  are  essential 
to  happiness — health,  wealth  and  domestic  relations.  Any 
of  these  lacking,  life  is  not  worth  having."  The  first  two 
Calvert  possessed,  but  in  his  wide,  luxurious  dwelling 
was  no  cherished  and  pervading  feminine  presence.  It 
was  intolerable.  He  must  marry  again.'  Yes,  even  at 
fifty-eight  he  would  try  for  home  life  once  more. 
Throughout  the  keenest  preoccupation  of  the  campaign 
the  resolve  had  been  present  with  him.  Largely  through 
himself,  so  he  believed,  the  country  was  about  to  take  a 
new  departure.  He  waited  to  be  sure  of  it  to  take  a  new 
departure  himself. 

Among  his  dead  Clara's  intimate  friends  was  a  slender, 
animated  young  lady  who  had  been  constantly  with  her, 
and  not  without  many  deep-hid  thoughts  concerning 
Clara's  rich,  handsome  and  influential  father — gray-haired 
and  twice  her  age  though  he  was  and  divorced  "  for 
cause,"  as  everybody  knew.  In  earlier  girlhood  she  had 
broken  off  an  engagement  because,  after  calm  study  of 
the  character  and  prospects  of  her  betrothed,  she  had 
decided  that  he  was  unlikely  to  become  as  rich  in  this 
world's  goods  as  he  was  in  hopes  of  them.  She  regarded 
Clara  Calvert,  with  her  delightful  home,  her  freedom,  her 
royal  command  of  money  and  of  her  father's  devotion,  as 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


459 


the  most  enviable  of  human  beings.  That  romantic  crea- 
ture was  sure  to  marry  some  day,  and  then  might  she, 
Bertha  Macdonald,  perhaps  succeed  as  the  mistress  of 
Clara's  ideal  realm  ?  Such  was  her  questioning  of  Fate 
even  before  Clara's  death,  and  after  it  the  master  of  that 
realm  became  the  object  of  her  all-absorbing  and  by  no 
means  concealed  interest. 

"  Love  begets  love."  To  her  contemporaries  of  the 
opposite  sex  Bertha  Macdonald,  though  attractive,  cer- 
tainly was  not  compelling,  since  at  twenty-nine  she  was 
still  unappropriated.  Had  he  been  near  her  own  age, 
Calvert  would  not  have  thought  twice  of  the  pallid,  almost 
passee  maiden,  well-placed,  well-educated  and  clever 
though  she  undoubtedly  was. 

But  to  an  elderly  man  all  feminine  charms  are  easily 
involved  in  the  priceless,  triumphant  charm  of  youth.  To 
be  the  object  of  romance — of  passion — to  a  woman  young 
enough  to  be  one's  daughter !  Intoxicating,  life-renewing 
idea !  Of  course  an  elderly  man  rarely  is  such  an  object, 
youth  being  nearly  as  necessary  for  kindling  the  genuine 
flame  in  the  feminine  breast  as  it  is  in  the  masculine. 
Yet  how  can  either  man  or  woman  interpret  sympathy 
and  solicitude  otherwise  than  as  one  would  fain  believe? 
At  the  time  of  Clara's  death.  Bertha's  unrestrained  grief, 
part  of  it  genuine  and  part  of  it  for  Calvert's  benefit,  was 
the  only  human  feeling  that  seemed  to  echo  his  own,  and 
not  many  months  had  passed  before  it  flashed  upon  the 
bereaved  father  that 

"  The  world  was  not  so  bitter. 
But  a  smile  could  make  it  sweet." 

The  campaign  had  brought  them  still  closer  together. 
Bertha  was  all  enthusiasm  for  the  success  of  Calvert's, 


46o  NEW    YORK :   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 


and,  therefore,  of  "  her,"  candidate.  She  indignantly  de- 
nounced the  latter's  "  traducers  " — wouldn't  "  hear  one 
word  of  the  disgusting  clerical  scandal " ;  "  Cleveland 
was  one  of  the  noblest  men  on  earth  " ;  "  if  the  story 
were  true,  it  was  the  woman's  fault '' ;  ''  men  couldn't  be 
judged  by  women's  standards,"  and  so  on.  Like  many 
of  her  sex  before  her,  in  thus  siding  with  Man  vs  Woman 
the  subtle  girl  found  her  reward — for  when  the  deciding- 
New  York  count  was  telegraphed  which  announced  Cleve- 
land President,  the  intoxicated  Calvert  rushed  with  the 
despatch  to  her  presence  and  threw  it  and  himself  at  her 
feet.  Kneeling  beside  her,  he  wound  his  arms  passion- 
ately round  her,  and  silent,  motionless,  his  face  hidden 
on  her  shoulder,  he  almost  swooned  with  the  conscious- 
ness that  triumph,  home,  haven,  everything,  were  his  at 
last. 

About  two  months  before  the  Cleveland  inauguration 
they  were  married.  The  State  of  New  York  allows  the 
innocent  but  not  the  guilty  party  to  a  divorce  to  marry 
again,  and  the  president-maker  was,  therefore,  obliged  to 
go  out  of  the  State  for  a  legal  wedding  ceremony.  After 
it  the  pair  made  a  tour  of  the  great  Atlantic  cities,  and 
everywhere  they  were  treated  by  the  Democratic  leaders 
with  the  marked  distinction  due  to  a  man  whose  high 
place  in  and  whose  potent  influence  with  the  incoming 
administration  were  absolutely  certain. 

The  engagement  had  not  been  announced,  and  Buffalo 
only  learned  of  the  marriage  through  its  evening  paper. 
A  handsome,  richly-dressed  woman  of  about  thirty-seven 
thus  first  knew  of  it,  and  with  the  sheet  clenched  in  her 
hand  walked  in  a  life-agony  up  and  down  her  dainty  par- 
lor ejaculating,  "My  God!     My  God!     My  God!" 

Her  mother,  a  woman  old  and  feeble,  came  in,  and  see- 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY,         461 

ing  her  daughter  haggard  and  distraught,  cried:  "Matty, 
what's  the  matter  ?  " 

"  Mother,  he's  married." 

"Married?     Who's  married?" 

"  Frank." 

"  Child,"  said  the  old  woman  solemnly,  "  what  did  I  tell 
you  years  ago  when  you  began  flirting  with  him  and  he 
a  married  man?  Didn't  I  warn  you  it  would  come  to  no 
good? " 

"  But  he  swore  in  the  sight  of  heaven  " —  beginning  to 
sob  and  gasp — "  that  I — that  I — and  not  she — was  his 
true  wife.  He  said  she  made  life  a  hell  for  him.  You 
know  I've  always  held  it  a  marriage.  Have  I  ev — have 
I  ever — looked  at  a  man  but  him  ?  " 

"  But  when  he  was  divorced  he  didn't  marry  you. 
That  showed  whether  he  held  you  as  his  wife !  " 

"  Mother — he  had  to  " — sobbing — "  to  make  a  home  for 
his  daughter.  She  had  to  keep  house  for  him  un — un — til 
she  should  marry.     He  couldn't  turn  her  out." 

"  But  she's  been  dead  a  year ;  and  why  didn't  he  marry 
you  then  if  he  wasn't  a  villain — a  lying  villain?" 

"  Oh — he  swore  he  wanted  to — to — to  marry  me — but 
how  could  he  when  he  was  so  deep  in  public  affairs,  wi — 
with  public  men  coming  to  see  him  all  the  time  and  stop- 
ping to  any  and  every  meal?  I  couldn't  have  sat  a — at 
the  head  of  his  table  without  making  a  scandal,  and  if 
he  had  married  me,  not  one  of  the  1 — la — ladies  he  knew 
would  have  called  on  me.  It  would  have  ruined  his  life. 
But  I  did  think^oh,  I  did  think  " — the  tears  pouring  like 
rivers — "  that  for  my  sake  he  would  live  single  before  the 
world — let  me  feel  that  behind  it  all — in  God's  sight,  and 
his,  and  yours,  and  my  own — I  was  his  wife  !  And  now — 
O  mother,  mother,  what  is  your  child  now?" — and  she 


462  A^iS^F    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

dashed  herself  to  the  floor  and  lay  face  downwards  with 
her  poor  dishonored  head  upon  her  arms. 

"  Thank  God,"  at  last  said  the  mother,  "  that  you  have 
no  child !  " 

Lifting  passionately  her  face  to  heaven,  "  Curse  God 
that  I  have  no  child !  "  she  cried.  "  It  might  have  kept 
him  true." 

**  Never — my  poor,  deluded  girl,"  sighed  the  mother ; 
"  never !  never !  " 

Meantime  the  gray-haired  bridegroom  was  so  blissfully 
happy  that  it  seemed  to  him  he  had  never  known  happi- 
ness before.  The  bride,  while  coaxing  and  playful  as 
women  often  are  with  much  older  men,  was  yet  so  warmly 
affectionate  and  caressing  that  even  Calvert's  yearning 
heart  was  fully  satisfied.  His  gifts  to  her  were  prodigal 
— delirious.     He  simply  adored  her. 

After  a  radiant  honeymoon  the  pair  came  home  to  Buf- 
falo, to  be  at  once  inundated  with  cards  and  invitations 
from  the  entire  elite  of  the  town.  The  mission  to  Eng- 
land or  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet  was  considered  by  Calvert's 
friends  the  inevitable  meed  of  his  priceless  services  to 
the  party  and  its  "  new  man."  At  his  desk  in  the  morn- 
ing he  was  the  centre  of  plans  and  combinations  bolder 
and  more  far-reaching  than  any  he  had  yet  attempted,  and 
at  his  evening  fireside  he  was  enchanted  to  make  out  with 
his  smiling  bride  lists  for  the  series  of  dinners,  ending 
with  a  grand  ball,  with  which  he  proposed  to  fill  up  the 
ensuing  month.  Immediately  after,  they  would  go  on  to 
Washington  to  be  present  in  splendor  at  the  presidential 
inauguration  in  March  and  its  accompanying  festivities 
— and  of  course  by  that  time  Calvert's  national  appoint- 
ment would  have  been  made  public. 


CHAPTER   LIX. 


DUST   TO    DUST. 


But  the  February  weather  was  phenomenally  bitter, 
and  our  confident,  vigorous  American  was  heedless,  as 
always  heretofore,  of  exposure.  Though  the  clerks  in 
his  office  wrote  muffled  in  their  outer  wraps,  Calvert  rasWy 
sat  at  his  desk  clothed  only  as  usual.  He  took  cold,  be- 
gan to  feel  strangely  unlike  himself  and  complained  laugh- 
ingly to  that  effect.  Nevertheless,  being  summoned  to 
Albany  on  political  business,  he  nerved  himself  to  go 
and  to  spend  there  a  day  or  two.  Returning,  he  found 
himself  so  ill  that  the  family  doctor  was  sent  for,  and 
the  doctor,  secretly  alarmed,  at  once  put  him  to  bed  in 
charge  of  a  trained  nurse. 

By  the  next  twenty-four  hours  brain  fever  had  declared 
itself.  Another  nurse  was  engaged — other  physicians 
were  called  in.  Everything  that  money,  science,  devo- 
tion and  love  could  do  was  done,  but  Frank  Calvert  was 
wanted  elsewhere  in  the  universe.  His  earthly  course 
was  run,  nor  could  he  be  longer  retained  in  the  sphere 
of  its  triumphs.  Within  three  weeks  that  daring  and  con- 
quering spirit,  that  beloved,  inspiring  presence,  had  van- 
ished forever  from  the  scene — the  first  of  that  remarkable 
list  of  the  promoters  of  Grover  Cleveland  to  his  first  presi- 
dency who  were  soon  to  bend  either  to  intimate  bereave- 
ment, to  intimate  misfortune,  or  to  untimely  death  itself. 

Calvert's  physicians  declared  that  he  perished  of  abso- 


464  NEW    YORK:   A"  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

lute  nervous  exhaustion  caused  by  over-work.  Though 
this  v/as  his  first  real  illness,  it  proved  his  last,  because 
the  strain  and  anxiety  of  the  presidential  campaign  added 
to  his  always  incessant  business  labors,  had  drawn  too 
heavily  upon  his  vitality.  When  attacked  by  disease  there 
was  no  resisting  force  left.  From  the  beginning  there 
was  practically  no  hope.  He  plunged  straight  down  into 
his  grave — his   mission   done. 

And  what  a  mission  !  The  elevation  of  a  ''  dark  horse," 
a  "  new  man,"  an  "  unknown  quantity  "  to  one  of  the  four 
great  head-ships  of  the  globe,  in  order  to  advance — not 
Calvert's  party,  nor  Calvert's  country,  but  merely  Cal- 
vert's State  and  Calvert's  self;  for  it  is  impossible  that 
a  Democrat  who  cared  for  his  party  should  have  worked 
to  intrust  it  to  an  executive  capable  of  anything  so  sub- 
versive of  its  principles  as  the  signing  of  the  *'  czar  " 
mayoralty  bill  for  New  York  City,  or  that  one  who  cared 
for  his  country  should  have  placed  at  its  very  head  a  life- 
long local  politician  rather  than  a  great  and  tried  states- 
man like  Thurman,  known,  honored  and  trusted  of  the 
whole  nation,  and  who,  had  the  editors  and  wire-pullers 
of  the  State  and  city  of  New  York  so  willed,  could  have 
been  nominated  with  genuine  public  instead  of  with  manu- 
factured convention  enthusiasm,  and  could  have  been 
elected  by  an  honest  American  majority  far  more  easily 
than  was  Cleveland  by  his  bought  Tammany  one  ! 

Ah — in  the  spaces  of  eternity — when  Calvert's  dis- 
embodied spirit  met  that  of  the  chaste  Julia,  did  she  re- 
proach him  bitterly  with  the  dishonor  he  had  brought 
upon  her  sex  by  the  elevation  of  its  *'  habitual  enemy  "  to 
highest  place  and  power? 

And  in  return  did  he  as  bitterly  retort :  "  Proud  girl, 
if  in  one  whom  you  despised  as  the  mere  dry-goods  clerk 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  465 

you  could  have  foreseen  the  future  president-maker — in- 
stead of  the  cold,  supercilious  wife  you  proved,  would 
you  have  felt  bound  to  try  and  realize  the  ideal  of  your 
lover-husband,  and  thereby  so  secure  his  adoring  rever- 
ence to  the  womanhood  you  embodied  as  to  enroll  him 
forever  as  its  knight  and  champion?  What  did  you,  or 
your  mother,  or  your  sisters,  or  in  fact  any  women  I 
knew  on  earth — orphan  boy  that  I  w^as  left — do  to  make 
me  realize  that  I  owed  anything  to  womanhood  except 
my  manhood's  homage  to  its  visible  charms  and  fascina- 
tions? Had  you  been  a  better  wife  I  should  have  been 
a  better  man.  I  worshipped  you.  You  had  the  making 
of  me.  But  you  disdained  the  task,  and  now  millions 
must  take  the  consequences,  myself  included." 

****** 

In  the  community  which  was  his  home  Calvert's  death 
caused  a  profound  sensation,  and  his  funeral,  held  in  the 
Episcopal  cathedral,  was  correspondingly  impressive.  The 
spacious  edifice  was  unable  to  contain  the  crowds  that 
sought  admission.  From  far  and  near  flowers  and  floral 
devices  poured  in,  and  they  made  a  display  such  as  the 
"  Lake  City  "  had  never  seen.  To  the  thrilling  words  of 
[he  Anglican  service,  high  music  and  the  deep-toned  organ 
added  their  solemn  pomp.  The  officiating  clergyman  de- 
livered— so  said  the  newspapers — "  an  eloquent  and  feel- 
ing tribute  to  the  memory  of  the  deceased,"  and  the  young 
men  who  thronged  the  aisles  and  the  porches  doubtless 
drew  the  logical  moral  from  the  poetic  veil  thrown  by 
Religion  over  this  brilliant,  triumphant,  but  most  thor- 
oughly pagan  life — "  Let  me  die  the  death  of  the  un- 
righteous,  and  let  my  last  end  be  like  his." 

In  the  will  made  by  the  doomed  man  in  a  conscious 
interval  he  did  not  leave  unprovided  for  the  Anonyma 


466         NEW    YORK :  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

who  for  years  had  been  so  near  to  him.  It  also  remem- 
bered generously  a  surviving  sister,  gave  modest  legacies 
to  his  Dexter  sisters-in-law  and  devised  a  large  one  to 
his  young  prot^g^  and  business  manager,  Carl  Hiller. 
Most  ample  and  tender  provision  was  made  for  the  bride- 
widow,  and  all  the  remainder  of  the  estate  was  to  go  to 
the  unborn  child,  if  such  there  should  prove;  if  not,  or 
if  the  child  should  not  survive,  Mrs.  Calvert  was  to  have 
the  whole. 

The  youthful  wife  who  was  made  so  ruthlessly  a  rich 
and  youthful  widow  was  now  for  months  the  centre  of 
romantic  solicitude  from  every  quarter,  and  society  was 
one  day  in  agitated  suspense  indeed  while  her  life  hung 
in  the  balance  on  behalf  of  the  son  for  whom  throughout 
his  manhood  Calvert  had  so  passionately  longed.  Only 
for  a  few  feeble  hours,  however,  did  the  infant  heir  linger 
upon  the  earth  that  promised  him  so  much,  and  then  all 
that  was  his  became  his  mother's. 

The  latter  might  now  have  been  doubly  desolate  were 
it  not  that  her  sole  co-executor  in  her  husband's  large 
estate  was  none  other  than  Calvert's  young  legatee,  Carl 
Hiller.  Him  the  interesting  widow  was  obliged  to  con- 
sult incessantly,  and  the  intercourse  could  have  but  one 
finale.  True  that  she  was  six  years  older  than  he,  but 
until  a  man  is  over  thirty-five  a  seniority  of  anywhere 
from  three  to  ten  years  only  makes  a  fascinating  woman 
more  fascinating — her  dependence  more  endearing.  That 
these  two  lives  should  flow — nay,  rush — into  one  was  in- 
evitable. Calvert's  latest  and  fondest  love  soon  felt  the 
adoring  confidence  in  her  co-executor  that  proclaims  the 
advent  of  the  genuine  husband-king — and  he  was  as 
irresistibly  drawn  to  be  her  life-long  protector  and  shield. 
In  one  year  and  one  month   after  the  imposing  Calvert 


NEW    YORK :    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.        467 

obsequies,  the  people  who  had  so  expended  their  sympa- 
thies over  his  widow's  romantic  sorrows  were  stupefied  at 
receiving  the  wedding  cards  of  "  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Carl  Mil- 
ler"; but  as  the  joyous  pair  were  already  on  the  ocean 
en  route  for  Paris,  society  was  left  to  reconcile  the  real 
and  the  ideal  as  best  it  might,  and  to  wonder  whether 
the  German  thrift  of  the  enterprising  bridegroom  would 
encourage  "  Mrs.  Hiller  "  to  "  entertain  "  as  lavishly  as 
"  Mrs.  Calvert "  would  certainly  have  done  under  the 
princely  American  inspiration  of  her  original  liege. 

In  Calvert  was  literally  fulfilled  the  Psalmist's  wish 
against  the  ungodly — "  His  heritage  let  another  take." 

Poor  Calvert !  Was  he  then  never  truly  loved — loved 
for  his  own  sake?  Among  the  women  he  had  felt  for 
and  worked  for  had  he  met  no  true  wife — not  one  whose 
soul  was  as  his  own — not  one  to  play  the  inter-penetrat- 
ing r6le  throughout  the  gamut  of  his  being  that  the  Scrip- 
ture seems  to  say  God  designed  when  He  said :  "  Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image  and  after  our  likeness.  .  .  . 
So  God  created  man  in  his  own  image :  in  the  image  of 
God  created  He  him :  male  and  female  created  He  them  "  ? 

Surely,  since  romantic,  that  is,  ideal  love,  is  the  uni- 
versal aspiration — the  universal  longing — of  the  human 
spirit,  it  must  have  been  universally  intended;  but  how 
seldom  is  any  one  truly  loved,  how  seldom  does  any  one 
truly  love ! 

"  Man  crouches  and  blushes, 
Absconds  and  conceals, 
He  creepeth  and  peepeth, 
He  palters  and  steals. 
Infirm,  melancholy, 
Jealous  glancing  around, 
An  oaf,  an  accomplice 
He  poisons  the  ground. 


468         NEI^f^'    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

Out  spake  the  great  Mother 

Beholding  his  fear, 

At  the  sound  of  her  accents 

Cold  shuddered  the  sphere  : 

'  Who  has  drugged  my  boy's  cup  ? 

Who  has  mixed  my   boy's  bread  ? 

Who,  with  sadness  and  madness, 

Has  turned  my  child's  head?'" 

Shall  we  find  tlie  answer  in  the  portentous  saying  of 
the  lamented  Frederick  Robertson,  of  Brighton,  England, 
whose  life-work  was  mutilated  and  shortened  by  his  own 
unsympathetic  marriage  ? — 

"  There  is  a  rock  on  which  every  human  soul  must 
anchor  or  he  split;  it  is  the  sex  opposite  to  its  own.'' 


CHAPTER  LX. 


DID   IT  PAY  r 


Whatever  else  may  be  demanded  of  a  candidate  for 
the  tremendous  prestige,  powers  and  responsibilities  of  a 
President  of  the  United  States,  his  moral  character,  like 
Caesar's  wife,  should  be  above  suspicion,  and  it  is  a  great 
pity,  as  it  was  a  great  oversight,  that  this  prerequisite 
was  not  embodied  in  the  Federal  Constitution. 

Since  it  was  not,  the  year  1884  was  blacker  than  any 
year  before  it  in  American  annals,  because  in  that  year 
two  men  were  respectively  the  standard-bearers  of  the 
great  parties,  one  of  whom,  gifted,  beloved  and  believed 
in  as  he  was,  could  not  positively  disprove  the  Democratic 
charge  of  bribery  when  in  Congress,  nor  the  other  deny 
the  clerical  accusation  of  profligacy — and  the  latter, 
through  the  alliance  of  the  Republican  Civil  Service  Re- 
formers with  the  Democrats,  was  elected. 

The  important  inquiry  is — Did  it  pay  either  the  men 
who  put  Grover  Cleveland  in  or  the  great  Democratic 
Party  itself  thus  to  do  evil  that  good  might  come?  Was 
the  party  justified  by  the  logic  of  events  or  the  men  per- 
sonally by  the  smile  of  Heaven? 

As  for  the  latter,  within  a  few  years  of  Cleveland's  first 
election,  of  the  prominent  Democrats  who  either  promoted 
or  suffered  it,  the  following  died — several  of  them  early 
in  the  Presidential  term :  Vice-President  Hendricks,  John 
Kelly,  Samuel  Tilden,  Horatio  Seymour,  Daniel  Manning, 
Samuel  Randall,  National-Democratic-Chairman  Barnum 


V 

470         NEiV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  Senator  Pendleton,  the  latter's  wife  previously  having 
been  killed  while  driving.  Senator  Bayard's  daughter 
killed  herself  and  his  wife  died.  Editors  Dorsheimer  and 
Pulsifer,  of  New  York,  and  Henry  Grady,  of  Atlanta,  Ga., 
died ;  Editors  Pulitzer  and  Ballard  Smith  of  the  New  York 
World  nearly  or  quite  lost  their  eyesight,  and  Albert 
Pulitzer  of  the  New  York  Journal  became  a  hypochon- 
driac; two  high  New  York  officials,  Hubert  O.  Thompson 
and  Rollin  Squire,  became  discredited  in  their  great  posi- 
tions, and  the  former  soon  after  died;  the  Rev.  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  and  the  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke  died 
early  in  the  first  Cleveland  administration  and  George 
William  Curtis  just  before  his  second. 

The  prominent  Catholic,  Father  Edward  McGlynn, 
antagonized  the  Vatican  on  the  Single  Tax  and  the  Public 
School  questions,  was  ousted  from  his  important  New 
York  parish,  was  disciplined,  remanded  to  the  country  and 
died.  William  C.  Whitney  was  bereaved  of  a  young  son 
and  of  his  devoted  first  wife;  later  in  life  his  beautiful 
second  one  met  with  a  horrible  accident  and  for  fifteen 
months  lingered  in  living  death,  and  he  himself  was  but  re- 
cently cut  untimely  off  in  his  very  highest  flush  of  plu- 
tocracy and  social  and  sporting  prestige.  E.  L.  Godkin 
remained  the  head  of  the  Evening  Post  nniiX  the  Cuban 
war,  when  his  envenomed  daily  comment  against  the 
popular  President  McKinley,  whom,  with  his  advisers, 
Godkin  considered  "  the  most  dangerous  lot  of  scoundrels 
by  which  any  civilized  country  was  ever  beset,"  so  threat- 
ened the  circulation  as  to  compel  his  withdrawal  from  the 
editorship  he  had  held  so  long.  Taking  his  discomfiture 
to  England,  he  died  and  was  buried  there — Providence 
thus  sparing  to  the  noble  Republic  he  had  despised  and 
misled  the  desecration  of  his  alien  bones. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  47' 

Besides  these  prominent  personages,  death  or  evil  for- 
tune pursued  a  number  of  other  equally  devoted  but  less 
known  Cleveland  w^orkers,  while  the  hitherto  lights  and 
leaders  of  the  party  that  remained  were  either,  like  the 
great  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  left  in  political  obscurity  by 
Cleveland's  arrogance  and  jealousy  or,  as  his  appointees, 
were  belittled  by  his  littleness.  Worst  fate  of  all,  the 
splendid  ex-Senator  Thurman  was  tacked  on  to  the 
second  Cleveland  nomination  in  1888  as  the  Fic^-Presi- 
dential  candidate;  but  this  last  blow  proved  too  much;  the 
patriot  heart  of  the  "  Old  Roman  "  (as  he  was  popularly 
called)  broke  during  the  campaign,  and  soon  after  he 
perished  from  the  newspaper-blinded  country  which  had 
first  taken  away  from  him  his  senatorial  toga  to  bestow  it 
upon  a  "  Standard  Oil  "  money  bag,*  and  afterward,  in- 
stead of  the  "  gold  tried  in  the  fire  "  of  his  twenty  years' 
national  service,  had  exalted  to  the  presidency  the  thinly- 
gilt  lead  of  a  newspaper-made  "  new  man." 

*  Senator  Payne,  William  C.  Whitney's  father-in-law. 


CHAPTER  LXI. 


THE  FIRST  CLEVELAND  TERM. 


As  to  the  benefit  to  the  Democratic  Party  of  this  ex- 
altation of  the  untried  over  the  tried  to  its  highest  honor 
— "  The  possession  of  power,"  declared  Balzac,  "  no  mat- 
ter how  enormous,  does  not  bring  with  it  the  knowledge 
hew  to  wield  it.  Power  leaves  us  just  as  it  finds  us.  Only 
great  natures  grow  greater  by  its  use." 

The  monumental  fiasco  of  Grover  Cleveland  as  for 
twelve  years  the  standard-bearer  of  one-half  of  a  great 
nation  and  for  eight  years  the  Executive-in-Chief  of  the 
whole  of  it  proved  for  the  ten  thousandth  time  the  truth 
of  the  Balzac  saying. 

Terrific  problems  confronted  the  Democratic  Party  on 
its  accession  to  power  after  its  long  deposition — not  only 
the  restoration  of  its  own  foundation  policies  and  the  pro- 
motion of  Civil  Service  Reform,  but  also  the  rehabilitation 
of  the  trampled  and  suffering  South,  the  finding  under  our 
form  of  government  of  their  true  places  for  womanhood, 
for  the  foreigner  and  for  the  negro,  and  that  assumption 
by  the  United  States  of  closer  trade  relationship  with  and 
the  political  leadership  of  all  other  republics  toward  which 
the  great  Blaine  was  already  steering  his  country. 

What  room  was  here — as  Senator  Hoar  of  Massachu- 
setts in  inspired  language  once  pointed  out  to  his  own 
aspiring  party — "  for  sympathy  with  liberty  and  repub- 
lican government  at  home  and  abroad,  for  Americanism 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  473 

everywhere,  for  leadership  along  loftier  paths  by  minds 
ever  open  to  the  sunlight  and  the  morning,  ever  open  to 
new  truth  and  new  duty  as  the  new  years  bring  their 
lessons !  "  Alas  !  Buffalo's  "  new  man  "  not  only  failed  to 
see  or  even  to  suspect  the  "  new  truths "  and  "  new 
duties  "  of  these  "  new  years "  in  which  he  was  at  the 
helm  of  the  Republic;  such  was  his  inadequacy  to  the 
position  that  he  could  not  even  bring  his  vessel  into  the 
old  port  along  the  old  time-honored  lines ! 

Elected  by  the  defection  of  the  Independent  Repub- 
licans from  their  own  party  to  his  in  order  that  he  might 
carry  out  their  special  policy  of  Civil  Service  Reform — 
so  far  was  he  from  fulfilling  the  laws  either  of  honor  or 
of  principle  in  this  regard  that  in  little  more  than  two 
years  from  the  date  of  his  first  inauguration,  in  1885, 
about  forty-two  thousand  of  the  fifty-five  thousand  officials 
removable  by  the  President  had  been  removed  and  their 
places  filled  by  Democrats — a  proportion  which  Senator 
Hale  of  Maine  declared  in  Congress  to  be  unexampled  in 
American  history. 

In  fact,  the  only  notable  achievement  of  the  first  Cleve- 
land term  was  the  development  of  the  Navy  by  the  able 
Secretary  of  the  Navy,  William  C^  Whitney,  along  the 
lines,  so  it  is  claimed,  of  his  brilliant  Republican  prede- 
cessor in  the  Department,  the  Hon.  William  H.  Hunt — 
the  President's  own  energies  being  expended  chiefly  in 
bestowing  office  and  in  examining  pension  bills.  As  the 
latter  averaged  fifty  dollars  a  year  each,  and  as  he  vetoed 
about  three  hundred  of  them,  he  saved  to  the  United 
States  Treasury  by  his  laborious  and  time-consuming 
scrutiny  the  enormous  sum  of  fifteen  thousand  dollars 
annually ! 

The  tariff  revision  to  which  the  Democratic  Party  was 


474  NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

committed  was  not  attempted  because  the  Senate  was 
still  held  by  the  Republicans;  but  would  not  a  true  states- 
man have  appointed  a  commission  of  economic  experts 
to  point  out  to  the  American  people  wherein  the  port  cus- 
toms could  be  reduced  so  as  least  to  disturb  the  finances 
of  the  country?  Some  one  has  reported  President  Cleve- 
land frankly  to  have  said,  "  I  don't  know  anything  about 
the  tariff."  If  this  were  true,  might  not  he  himself  have 
taken  lessons  from  such  a  commission  and  so  have  had 
something  definite  to  propose  to  the  nation?  But  he 
merely  sent  to  Congress  a  strong  generalizing  plea  for 
tariff  reduction,  and  there,  for  his  first  term,  the  matter 
ended. 


CHAPTER  LXII. 

THE   HARRISON   ADMINISTRATION. 

In  spite  of  President  Cleveland's  mouse  of  performance 
as  compared  with  their  mountain  of  promise  on  his  be- 
half, the  great  New  York  dailies  which  had  created  him 
were,  of  course,  unanimous  for  his  re-election.  It  would 
never  do  to  confess  that  in  persuading  the  nation  to  confer 
its  highest  honor  upon  an  unknown  quantity  they  alone 
were  responsible  for  its  having  drawn  a  blank  instead  of 
a  prize.  The  sham  and  the  falsehood  must  therefore  go  on 
and  Cleveland  still  be  held  up  before  the  country  as  those 
same  journals  persist  in  holding  him  to  this  day — i.e.  a 
man  pre-eminent  in  the  qualities  requisite  to  a  great  ex- 
ecutive. 

All  the  same,  the  disappointing  negations  of  his  regime 
— the  fact  that,  contrary  to  public  expectation,  no  Repub- 
lican "  rascals  "  after  the  long  incumbency  of  twenty- four 
years  had  been  exposed  (simply,  there  were  none  to  ex- 
pose), and  the  campaign  scandal  of  1884  being  not  yet 
altogether  forgotten — it  proved  not  difficult  for  the  veteran 
Republican  managers  to  defeat  his  second  candidacy  for 
the  Presidency  by  the  stainless  character,  hereditary 
statesman,  civil  war  veteran,  splendid  lawyer  and  most 
felicitous  speaker,  Benjamin  Harrison. 

President  Harrison  made  James  G.  Blaine  his  Secretary 
of  State,  the  masterful  "  Tom  "  Reed  was  Speaker  of  the 
House,  and  tjie  skilled  and  able  McKinley  was  its  leader. 


476         NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Between  them  this  "  big  four " — sustained  in  both 
branches  of  Congress  by  fellow-RepubHcans  almost  equal 
to  themselves — carried  through  an  administration  which 
must  ever  rank  as  one  of  the  most  dazzling  in  American 
annals.  The  famous  McKinley  bill  of  1890  was  passed, 
of  which  the  immediate  industrial  stimulus  and  resulting 
prosperity  were  so  abounding  that  Harrison's  re-election 
was  deemed  practically  certain.  Moreover,  a  magnificent 
and  indeed  sublime  movement  for  industrial  reciprocity 
among  all  the  American  Republics  was  fully  launched 
by  the  high-soaring  genius  and  comprehensive  sympathies 
of  the  generous  Blaine,  which,  had  it  been  adhered  to, 
would  probably  have  resulted  in  the  international  alliance 
of  all  the  then  Republics  of  the  world — France,  Switzer- 
land, Liberia,  the  Transvaal  and  the  Orange  Free  State, 
together  with  our  own  and  all  those  of  South  and  Central 
America,  and  an  Isthmian  Canal  might  by  now  be  com- 
pleting minus  the  late  needless  and  wicked,  and,  because 
promoted  by  the  United  States,  inconceivable  dismember- 
ment of  our  sister  Republic  of  Colombia.* 

How  came  it,  then,  since  "  every  wheel  was  turning 
and  Labor  was  receiving  more  for  labor  than  Labor  ever 
received  before,"  that  in  1892,  when  Harrison  and  Cleve- 
land were  again  confronted  at  the  polls,  the  former  was 
defeated  and  Cleveland  elected  for  a  second  term? 

Alas,  the  jealousies  of  the  friends  of  Harrison  and 
Blaine  on  their  behalf  disrupted  their  splendid  political 
alliance  and  co-operation,  and  the   fatuity  of  making  a 

*  For  does  not  everybody  know  that  if  President  Roosevelt  had  given 
Colombia  the  choice  between  ratifying  the  Hay-Herran  treaty  for  the 
Canal  and  our  own  recognition  of  the  seceding  Panama — like  the  tradi- 
tional "possum,"  Colombia  would  instantaneously  have  cried — "Don't 
shoot,  Mr.  President!    I'll  come  down "  ? 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  477 

Catholic  the  Chairman  of  the  National  Republican  Com- 
mittee did  the  rest. 

For  the  Catholic  vote  was  and  always  had  been  faith- 
fully Democratic.  Could,  then,  any  true,  sincere  Catholic 
in  his  heart  of  hearts  burn  to  defeat  the  political  party 
to  which  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  his  fellow- 
believers  belonged?  Impossible.  Even  with  honest  inten- 
tions a  man  cannot  fight  against  those  of  his  own 
household  of  faith  as  he  can  against  other  men.  The  Re- 
publicans were  amazed  and  confounded  at  their  defeat, 
and  when  they  came  to  investigate  it,  discovered  all  too 
late,  that  instead  of  energy  and  vigilance,  inertia  and 
over-confidence  had  marked  the  conduct  of  the  campaign. 
The  Protestant  who  takes  for  his  political  staflF  a  Roman 
Catholic  has  only  himself  to  thank  if  it  break  and  pierce 
the  hand  that  holds  it. 

Whatever  the  cause,  Cleveland's  third  candidacy,  like 
his  first,  was  successful;  nor  was  he  successful  alone. 
Both  houses  of  Congress  were  also  Democratic,  and  now, 
surely,  the  great  man  would  show  what  he  could  do ! 

In  the  interregnum  he  had  not  shown  himself  either 
very  great  or  very  good.  On-  his  retirement  he  had  taken 
up  his  residence  in  the  great  city  which  had  consummated 
his  fortunes  and  had  been  welcomed  into  a  leading  law 
firm  which  had  been  among  his  earliest  and  stanchest  sup- 
porters. 

In  several  cases  in  which  he  was  made  a  referee  the 
Court  did  not  sustain  his  findings — which  seems  to  speak 
volumes  against  his  legal  acumen — and  as  for  his  much- 
vaunted  political  "honesty"  and  "courage,"  in  1891-92 
he  looked  on  without  a  word  of  protest  at  the  theft  of  the 
Albany  Legislature  connived  at  by  the  Democratic  Gov- 


478  NEW    YORK:    A^  SYMPHONIC  STUDY 

ernor  in  order  to  elect  a  Democrat  *  to  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States,  and  though,  during  his  four  years'  recess 
from  the  presidency.  New  York  City,  as  usual,  was  in 
the  throes  of  her  sempiternal  struggle  against  Tammany 
Hall,  neither  sign  of  sympathy  nor  syllable  of  encourage- 
ment did  the  ex-President  vouchsafe  to  the  agitators  for 
honest  government.  On  the  contrary,  in  his  role  of  "  good 
Democrat "  he  appeared  at  Tammany  banquets  and  on 
Tammany  platforms;  in  his  campaign  of  1892  he  openly 
entered  into  political  relations  with  the  Tammany  leaders 
— Croker,  Murphy  and  Sheehan — and  at  his  inaugura- 
tion procession,  in  March,  1893  (so  recorded  by  the 
Herald),  as  the  long  column  of  Tammany  "braves,"  with 
their  green  scarfs  and  banners,  reached  the  reviewing 
platform.  President  Cleveland  actually  rose  from  his  seat 
and  remained  standing  until  they  had  marched  by,  pro- 
claiming thus  to  his  country  the  unholy  alliance  between 
political  Protestantism  and  political  Catholicism  which 
is  so  stealthily  but  surely  engaged  in  wrecking  the  institu- 
tions of  that  country ! 

*  i.e.,  The  Irish  Catholic,  Edward  Murphy,  Jr.,  of  Troy,  N.  \  . 


CHAPTER  LXIII. 

THE  SECOND  CLEVELAND  TERM. 

In  1893  Civil  Service  Reform  v^as  not  a  foremost  issue  in 
the  Democratic  mind.  That  mind  was  fixed — first,  upon 
the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  silver  purchasing  act,  and,  sec- 
ond, upon  the  revision  of  the  but  just  established  high 
protective  McKinley  tariff. 

From  the  previous  November,  therefore,  to  March  of 
that  year,  manufacturers  and  financiers  had  been  waiting 
like  condemned  criminals  for  the  Presidential  inaugura- 
tion, and  after  the  inauguration  they  waited  week  after 
week  for  the  fiat  of  this  Democratic  Congress  and  Presi- 
dent which  must  and  would  touch  every  pocket  through- 
out the  broad  and  trembling  land.  "  Business  "  was  fran- 
tic to  know  its  fate,  so  that  as  speedily  as  possible  it  could 
adjust  itself  to  its  reversed  conditions.  The  President 
and  the  Platform  had  equally  branded  the  McKinley  tariff 
as  "  robbery."  Surely,  then.  Congress  would  be  called  as 
speedily  as  possible  in  special  session  to  stop  the  robbery. 
"  Why,  in  Heaven's  name,"  so  fretted  the  money  centres, 
"  was  not  Congress  so  called  together  ?  " 

Why,  indeed,  except  that  the  President  was  too  busy  re- 
warding the  hungry  thousands  to  attend  at  once  to  the 
anxious  millions.  The  transfer  of  the  ofifices  from  Re- 
publicans to  Democrats  was  as  sweepingly  carried  out  as 
in  his  first  administration — this  time  even  to  the  United 
States  consulships  throughout  the  world.    Neither  names 


48o  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Standard  in  science  nor  sacred  in  American  history,  nor 
the  few  poor  little  places  filled  by  poor  little  women,  were 
respected.  High  diplomatic  service  and  even  a  leading 
embassy  were  the  open  rewards  of  large  campaign  con- 
tributions. The  Evening  Post  and  other  Civil  Service 
journals  blushed  and  protested  so  violently  that  the  most 
flagrant  of  these  "  spoilsmen  "  appointments  were  with- 
drawn ;  but  "  the  principle  remained  the  same,"  for  later 
in  the  administration  the  President  flatly  refused  patron- 
age to  Senators  and  Representatives  who  would  not  prom- 
ise him  votes  for  presidential  measures. 

By  the  end  of  June  came  the  demonetization  of  silver 
in  India  by  the  British  Government,  and  instantly  the 
great  panic  of  1893  was  upon  the  country,  its  bombs  fall- 
ing into  the  very  heart  of  that  "  White  City "  of  the 
Columbian  Exposition  which,  the  creation  and  sunburst 
of  American  genius — of  a  consensus  of  American  finan- 
ciers, engineers,  architects  and  artists — was  the  most 
beautiful  and  entrancing  out-door  ensemble  that  hereto- 
fore the  world  had  ever  seen. 

The  panic  made  a  special  session  imperative,  and  finally, 
four  endless  months  after  the  inauguration,  the  pre- 
occupied Executive  called  his  Democratic  Congress  to- 
gether for  the  repeal  of  the  dishonest  Republican  law 
which  was  compelling  the  purchase  of  silver  by  the  Gov- 
ernment at  its  old  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one,  though  the 
difference  in  value  had  become  nearly  fifty  to  one ! 

If  now  the  Congress  had  only  been  kept  in  session  in 
order  at  once  to  proceed  also  to  the  inevitable  tariff  re- 
vision ! 

But  no.  This  revision  was  postponed  to  the  regular 
session,  four  months  later,  and  when  the  tariff  surgeons 
finally  did  get  at  it,  their  proposals  were  at  first  so  sweep- 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  481 

ing  and  so  drastic  that  Capital  fled  to  its  safety  vaults, 
Enterprise  was  paralyzed  and  Industry  took  an  enforced 
vacation.  Within  two  years  after  the  second  Cleveland 
inauguration  it  was  estimated  that  a  million  men  were 
out  of  work  and  that  four  billions  of  dollars  worth  of 
American  securities  had  ceased  to  pay  dividends.  No 
gold  was  coming  into  the  national  Treasury,  but  gold  was 
draining  out  to  such  an  extent  that  the  reserve  got  down 
to  less  than  half  its  hundred  million  limit. 

It  is  on  record  that  Representative,  afterward  Governor, 
Oates,  of  Alabama,  was  calling  on  the  President  about  this 
time  and  the  latter  asked  him  what,  in  his  opinion,  was 
the  best  way  to  bring  the  country  out  of  its  financial  diffi- 
culties. He  replied  that  the  subject  was  a  most  intricate 
one,  and  while  in  a  general  way  outlining  his  views,  he 
confessed  finally  that  he  did  not  know  what  should  be 
done.  President  Cleveland  watched  him  .closely  as  he 
talked,  and  when  this  admission  came  out  he  brought  his 
fist  down  on  the  table  with  a  bang  that  shook  it  from  one 
end  to  the  other  and  said :  "  Well,  I'll  be  damned  if  I  know 
what  to  do !  "  * 

•  Washington  Evening  News,  June  4,  1893. 


CHAPTER  LXIV. 

THE   CLEVELAND  EXIT. 

Nevertheless,  something  must  be  done.  To  an  in- 
structed and  able  political  mind,  that  is,  to  a  statesman,  the 
frequent  example  of  our  sister  Republic  of  France  would 
have  been  object  lesson  enough,  since  time  after  time 
France  had  shown  that  "  the  people  " — the  great  patriotic 
public — will  always  subscribe  to  a  national  loan  in  a  na- 
tional emergency. 

But  our  Evening  Post  statesman  had  probably  never 
noted  this  little  example.  Instead,  he  turned  to  his  stanch 
friends  and  supporters,  the  New  York  plutocratic  bankers. 
Gladly  in  return  for  United  States  bonds  they  advanced 
gold  enough,  minus  their  own  commission,  to  fill  up  the 
Treasury  deficit,  and  immediately  after  were  able  to  sell 
the  bonds  at  a  high  profit.  Once,  twice  did  this  hap- 
pen, and  still  another  hundred  million  would  doubtless 
have  been  negotiated  in  the  same  manner,  had  not  the 
proprietor  of  the  World  raised  such  an  outcry  in  his  New 
York  and  St.  Louis  papers  that  the  bonds  were  perforce 
offered  to  the  general  public,  were  eagerly  taken,  and 
the  bankers'  commission  was  thereby  saved  to  the  nation. 
Sad  but  true  that  it  required  a  foreigner  (and  a  Jew  at 
that)  to  teach  a  Democratic  administration  one  of  the 
elementary  principles  of  American  patriotism ! 

All  this  so  discredited  the  Democratic  regime,  the  com- 
mercial and  industrial  suffering  was  so  widespread  and 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  483 

intense,  that  in  the  fall  elections  of  1894  the  Democratic 
candidates  were  everywhere  overwhelmingly  beaten.  By 
1895  the  next  presidential  campaign  was  in  sight,  with  no 
"  gold  Democrat,"  save  the  President  himself,  prominent 
enough  to  lead  it. 

"So  unpopular  had  he  become,  however,  that  it  is  said 
anything  more  dreary  than  the  White  House  during  the 
last  half  of  the  second  Cleveland  administration  can  hardly 
be  imagined.  He  had  treated  Congress  as  if  they  were 
"  a  set  of  school-boys,"  and  was  shut  up,  as  no  president 
had  ever  been,  to  the  counsels  of  those  whom  his  own 
favoritism  had  exalted.  No  one  who  could  help  it  went 
near  the  blunt,  unmanageable,  over-bearing  Executive. 
The  renegade  owner  of  the  New  York  Herald  and  the 
foreign-born  owner  of  the  New  York  World  insisted 
month  in  and  month  out  that  Cleveland  must  receive  a 
fourth  nomination  for  a  third  term.  Other  Democratic 
editors,  while  not  seconding  the  motion,  demanded  that 
at  least  the  President  declare  himself  one  way  or  the  other 
toward  this  proposed  breaking  of  the  unwritten  law  of  the 
country. 

But  the  life-long  office  seeker  took  good  care  to  make 
no  disavowal  of  a  third  term  candidacy.  On  the  con- 
trary, with  his  usual  shrewdness  where  his  personal  inter- 
ests were  concerned,  he  made  probably  the  very  best  bid 
for  it  that  he  could  have  hit  upon. 

England,  ever  greedy  for  more  territory,  was  bullying 
Venezuela  about  a  boundary.  Coming  home,  so  it  is  said, 
at  three  o'clock  one  morning  from  one  of  his  frequent 
duck-shooting  expeditions,  President  Cleveland  wrote  out 
a  message  asking  Congress  for  money  wherewith  to  send 
a  United  States  commission  to  Venezuela  to  determine 
what   Venezuela's   boundary    rights   actually   were,   sum- 


484  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

moned  his  cabinet,  not  to  discuss,  but  simply  to  hear,  this 
momentous  message,  and  by  noon  had  sped  the  same  on 
its  way  to  Congress. 

Of  course  this  was  practically  throwing  down  the 
gauntlet  to  Great  Britain,  and  to  one  who  believes  in  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  in  an  International  Alliance  of  all 
Republics,  this  message  of  President  Cleveland  is  the  finest 
and  most  statesmanlike  thing  he  ev^r  did,  and  would 
gladly  be  referred  to  the  category  of  a  wise  and  brave  and 
disinterested  Americanism  could  similar  acts  be  found  to 
bear  it  company. 

But  to  a  country  after  a  long  peace  nothing  is  so  popu- 
lar as  the  prospect  of  a  war.  War  is  the  natural  status 
of  the  natural  man.  From  their  babyhood  boys  are  spon- 
taneous fighters,  and  in  this  respect  especially  is  the  child 
the  father  of  the  man.  "In  all  ages"  said  the  historian 
Gibbon,  "  the  courage  of  the  soldier  is  the  cheapest  and 
commonest  of  human  virtues."  On  this  occasion  Cleve- 
land struck  the  great  "  common  chord  "  of  Masculinism 
with  a  sure  and  confident  hand.  If  now  his  great  party 
had  echoed  and  rallied  round  him,  his  fourth  nomination 
and  third  election  were  within  the  possibilities. 

The  exact  reverse  resulted.  The  Western  Democracy 
was  sore  and  chafing  under  its  silver  grievance;  Demo- 
cratic Labor  was  disgusted  because  in  its  war  against  the 
Pullman  Company  the  President  had  ordered  United 
States  troops  to  prevent  interference  with  the  United 
States  mails;  and  as  for  the  East — when  it  came  to  defy- 
ing the  British  Empire,  the  Evening  Post,  with  all  its 
Independent  following,  was  not  with  its  adored  President. 
Not  that  the  Anglo-Irish  Godkin  did  or  could  love  Cleve- 
land less,  but  that  he  loved  England  more.  Ruthlessly  as 
he  had  set  the  idol  up,  so  ruthlessly  did  he  now  pull  him 


NEW    YORK.     A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  4^5 

down.  His  two  papers  and  the  Independent  press  gen- 
erally denounced  the  Venezuela  message  in  such  unmeas- 
ured terms  that  the  Democratic  Executive  was  plainly- 
seen  to  have  lost  his  national  grip. 

As  the  astute  Samuel  Tilden  once  wrote  to  a  Democratic 
official :  "  A  public  man  must  show  not  only  that  he  is 
individually  right,  but  also  that  he  can  lead  his  party  and 
make  it  a  power  for  good ;  otherwise,  when  he  comes  to  be 
judged,  he  must  be  discarded,  because  he  cannot  effect 
results."  At  their  Presidential  Convention  of  1896  the 
alienated  and  divided  Democrats  inflicted  the  almost  un- 
precedented mortification  of  refusing  the  customary  party 
endorsement  of  their  own  party  administration ;  with  the 
maddest  frenzy  of  enthusiasm  they  nominated  a  candidate 
the  antipodes  in  every  respect  of  their  now  discredited 
President,  and  from  the  following  March,  Stephen 
Grover  Cleveland,  the  Political  Creation  of  a  hand- 
ful   OF    EDITORS    OF    THE    StATE    AND    THE    CiTY    OF    NeW 

York,  whether  as  figure  or  figure-head,  ceased  to  figure 
in  American  History. 


CHAPTER   LXV. 

A  CHARACTER  SKETCH. 

President  Cleveland  was  not  a  possible  great  man 
when  he  entered  the  White  House  and  he  was  not 
an  actual  great  man  when  he  left  it.  He  had  an  ex- 
ceptional ear  for  language — a  feeling  for  words— and  so 
had  his  unmarried  sister,  hitherto  a  teacher  in  young 
girls'  boarding  schools.  When  this  lady,  early  in  Presi- 
dent Cleveland's  first  term,  was  the  mistress  of  the  ex- 
ecutive mansion  she  very  cannily  published  a  book  of  her 
class  lessons  in  literature.  Emanating  from  the  White 
House,  the  toadyism  of  the  newspapers  praised  and  ad- 
vertised it  everywhere,  and  thus  helped  it  to  an  immense 
sale;  but  in  the  literary  world  it  was  esteemed  a  mere 
shallow  compilation  of  echoes  from  other  writers  not  only 
in  its  views  and  opinions,  but  even  in  its  language,  its  au- 
thor having  unconsciously  appropriated  the  very  hall- 
marks of  the  great  stylists — the  words  they  had  specially 
made  their  own — as  "  dusky  "  and  "  gush  "  from  Haw- 
thorne, "  tremendous  "  from  Henry  James,  and  so  on ! 

Like  sister,  like  brother.  Mr.  Cleveland  had  the  same 
parrot-like  instinct  for  sound — for  effect — but  he  was  all 
unaware  that  long  words  had  gone  out  of  fashion  even 
before  he  was  born,  and  therefore,  in  spite  of  an  occa- 
sional picturesque  or  striking  phrase,  the  sententious 
platitudes  of  his  messages  and  addresses  were  often  all 
but  pitiful,  and  comparable  to  nothing  so  much   as  im- 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  4^7 

mense,    loose,    flapping   garments    upon   some   poor   little 
spindle-biped  altogether  too  thin  and  small  for  them. 

It  is  rather  curious  that  in  1881,  the  very  year  in  which 
Mr.  Cleveland  became  mayor  of  Buffalo,  Professor 
Jewett  of  Oxford  thus  wrote  about  Thomas  Carlyle,  the 
great  literary,  as  Mr.  Cleveland  was  the  great  political 
bully  of  his  day. 

Carlyle  was  not  a  philosopher  at  all  to  my  mind,  for  I  do  not 
think  that  he  ever  thought  out  a  subject  for  himself.  His  power  of 
expression  quite  outran  his  real  intelligence,  and  constantly  deter- 
mined his  opinion.  While  talking  against  slaves  he  was  himself  the 
greatest  of  slaves.  .  .  His  "  Reminiscences"  convey  a  true  pic- 
ture of  the  man,  with  his  .  .  ruggedness  and  egotism  and  his  ab- 
solute disregard  and  indifference  about  everybody  but  himself.  .  •  . 
I  fai'  to  see  any  good  influence  which  he  has  exercised. 

If  Cleveland  had  been  a  cultivated  man  he  would  have 
known  how  to  write,  and  his  undoubted  literary  gift  might 
have  contributed  something  to  the  political  literature  of 
his  country.  But  his  very  limited  nature  and  his  ignorance 
combined  to  render  this  impossible.  To  become  honestly 
pre-eminent  and  to  remain  permanently  so  one  must  have 
a  great  head,  like  Daniel  Webster,  or,  like  Lincoln,  a  great 
heart.  Washington  had  both,  and  he  was  the  consummate 
man.  Cleveland  had  neither.  With  the  wider  horizons 
of  a  liberal  education,  he  still  would  have  been  an  in- 
tellectual mediocrity,  but  his  eventual  failure  might  not 
have  been  so  utter,  so  awful !  He  entered  the  Presidency 
in  1885  heralded  as  the  man  who  was  to  re-create  and  re- 
new the  Democratic  Party.  When  he  left  it  in  1897  ^^ 
Democratic  Party  was  in  sunder ! 

Wherein,  then,  lay  the  talent  that  certainly  did  bring 
him  to  the  highest  position  possible  to  an  American? 
"  Some  men  are  born  great ;  some  achieve  greatness,  and 


488  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

some  have  greatness  thrust  upon  them."  Cleveland's 
greatness  was  thrust  upon  him,  if  any  man's  ever  was, 
but  he  did  have  the  rare  quality  that  made  it  possible. 
He  had  the  talent  for  personal  success,  that  gift,  often 
miscalled  "  luck,"  which  with  little  aid  from  any  other 
can  waft  a  man  on  to  power  and  prestige,  but  \vanting 
which  all  talents  combined  may  leave  a  man  a  personal 
wreck  even  though  his  work  survive  him.  Grover  Cleve- 
land, like  Theodore  Roosevelt,  was  absolutely  shrewd  in 
feeling  which  way  the  wind  blew  and  in  trimming  his  sail 
accordingly.  He  never  saw  much  beyond  the  wave  just 
in  front  of  him,  but  he  could  get  to  the  top  of  that,  and 
he  did.     Assistant   District  Attorney  —  Sheriff  —  Mayor 

—  Governor  —  President  —  a  happy  marriage  —  a  fortune 

—  a  second  candidacy  —  a  third  —  a  second  presidency  — 
what  billow  after  billow  did  not  this  wonderful  opportunist 
easily  surmount!  How  long  did  his  great  talent  for 
success  keep  him  on  the  crests  of  our  vast  human  ocean ! 

But  the  gift  for  success  is  not  an  infinite  one,  and 
sooner  or  later  a  man  finds  himself  at  the  end  of  it.  Some 
mighty  unlooked-for  issue  appears  upon  the  horizon — 
some  tidal  wave  of  discontent  from  the  deep  bosom  of  the 
"  people  "  he  thought  he  understood  so  well  suddenly  roars 
and  threatens  toward  him.  This  whelming  surge  he  can- 
not ride,  and  when  it  has  plunged  down  and  passed  on, 
the  name  and  the  fame  and  the  memory  of  that  man  have 
been  swept  into  sea-beach  wreckage  along  with  all  the 
other  futile  and  fraudulent  disappointments  of  easily 
duped,  of  often  duped,  but  of  ever  sternly-reckoning  hu- 
manity. 

******** 

At  the  Loan  Portrait  Exhibition  of  1903  in  New  York 
City  were  displayed  on  a  small  wall  by  themselves  two 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  489 

portraits  by  the 'distinguished  Swedish  painter,  Zorn.  In 
the  one  on  the  right  stood  erect  a  compact,  alert  figure 
with  a  keen,  clear-cut  face,  every  faculty  and  every 
energy  trained  and  disciplined,  the  whole  man  cap-a-pie 
and  ready  on  the  instant  to  rush  in  and  win — while  in  the 
other  was  seated  at  a  library  table  a  ponderous  personage 
with  ponderous  tomes  ostentatiously  at  his  feet,  but  the 
features  and  the  expression  of  whose  large  visage  were 
alike  submerged  and  indistinct  amid  insubordinate  fat. 
The  pair  so  vividly  contrasting  represented  the  Hon. 
Stephen  Grover  Cleveland,  former  Chief  Executive  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  Hon.  Daniel  Scott  Lamont,  who 
from  an  Albany  journalist  became  Grover  Cleveland's 
private  secretary  and  one  of  the  quick-witted  managers 
of  his  presidential  campaign ;  who  later  was  his  Secretary 
of  War,  and  who  now  is  a  rising  railroad  magnate  and  a 
multi-millionaire.  The  portraits  might  have  served  both 
to  epitomize  and  to  explain  the  "Cleveland"  episode  which 
has  puzzled  so  many.  For  here  on  the  tell-tale  canvases 
were  the  ex-steered  and  the  ex-steerer — the  once  political 
candidate  and  the  once  political  reporter — the  former 
president  and  one  of  his  president-makers — the  American 
throne  and  the  power  behind  the  American  throne, 
namely,  the  American  Newspaper.* 

*  Since  these  pages  were  in  type  this  able  New  Yorker  has  added 
another  to  the  Cleveland  "  creators  "  who  have  untimely  passed  away 
(see  p.  478).  His  wealth  was  $3,000,000,  and  he  was  but  fifty-four 
years  old. 


CHAPTER  LXVI. 


SOWING  AND  REAPING. 


If  the  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them,  surely  the  evil 
that  they  are  lives  longer  still.  When  the  campaign 
slanders  of  1884  were  first  made  public,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered that  the  Rev.  Dr.  Beecher  said: — 

The  President  of  the  United  States  not  only  administers  the 
affairs  of  the  Government,  but  he  also  becomes  a  model  for  the 
young  men  of  the  land  and  we  must  see  to  it  that  he  is  in  every 
way  clean.  He  might  not  give  us  any  the  less  a  clean  administra- 
tion, but  the  precedent  of  such  a  man  in  the  presidential  chair  would 
not  alone  be  harmful  but  positively  demoralizing. 

Nine  years  after,  in  1893,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Parkhurst  de- 
clared from  his  New  York  pulpit: 

The  personal  and  moral  character  of  the  men  who  shall  govern 
us  is  a  matter  that  touches  to  the  quick  our  entire  condition  as  a 
moral  and  religious  community,  and  if  that  is  not  an  area  to  be  occu- 
pied by  the  rhinistry  and  the  church,  I  know  not,  before  God, 
what  is  the  use  of  having  any  ministry  or  any  church.  ,  .  .  You 
can  not  place,  even  in  a  subordinate  judicial  position,  a  man  whose 
life  is  known  to  be  tainted,  without  making  drunkenness  and 
debauchery  just  a  little  less  contemptible  in  the  minds  of  at  least  all 
those  young  men  whose  abhorrence  of  the  coarse  animal  pleasures  is 
not  full,  distinct  and  pronounced.  .  .  .  That  is  the  worst  fea- 
ture of  electing  to  office  men  who  are  corrupt — not  so  much  that  they 
govern  badly  or  extravagantly,  but  that  they  operate  irresistibly  to 
lower  the  moral  tone  of  the  whole  community. 

This  "  lowering  of  the  moral  tone  of  the  whole  com- 
munity " — this  rendering  the  "  coarse  animal  pleasures  " 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  491 

"  less  contemptible  "  in  the  eyes  of  the  young  men  of  the 
nation — was  precisely  what  resulted  from  the  supreme  ex- 
altation of  a  man  who  up  to  his  nomination  for  the  presi- 
dency had  notoriously  never  denied  himself  such  pleasures. 

Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  at  the  two-hundred-and-fiftieth 
Harvard  Anniversary  Celebration  the  crowding  Harvard 
youths  were  so  stupid  that  when  they  heard  this  pre- 
presidential  profligate  held  up  by  the  famous  Harvard 
poet-statesman,  James  Russell  Lowell,  as  the  "  ideal " 
American  and  themselves  led  the  cheers  and  shouts  of  the 
occasion — they  did  not  draw  the  moral  of  the  scene  to  be 
that  let  a  man  sow  what  "  wild  oats  "  he  will  and  for  so 
long  as  he  will,  in  the  end  they  will  weigh  not  one  feather 
against  the  boundless  admiration  and  esteem  which  not 
only  the  ignorant  and  thoughtless  many,  but  equally  the 
wise  and  responsible  few,  may  one  day  lavish  upon  him? 

From  Harvard  this  disgraceful  ovation  was  not  sur- 
prising, since  she  had  long  since  apostatized  from  the 
Deity  of  Jesus  Christ,  for  years  had  maintained  at  her 
head  a  frank  despiser  of  womanhood,  and  through  his 
influence  had  now  become  the  special  university  source 
of  masculine  scorn  and  contempt  toward  the  wife  and 
mother  sex  for  the  whole  United  States ;  but  the  influence 
of  it  all  may  be  measured  when  we  realize — first,  that 
William  Randolph  Hearst  was  then  an  under-graduate  ol 
that  University,  and,  second,  when  we  hear  from  the  plat- 
form of  a  National  Education  Convention  nearly  twenty 
years  later  that  "an  amazing  and  unparalleled  increase" 
in  student  immorality  is  one  of  the  admitted  educational 
conditions  of  the  day !  * 

*  See  address  of  Bishop  Thomas  F.  Gailor,  of  Tennessee,  at  the 
Convention  held  in  Boston  in  July,  1903. 


CHAPTER  LXVII. 

THE   UNFORGIVABLE. 

The  immitigable  wrong  which  American  Womanhood 
cannot  and  must  not  forgive  the  Democratic  Party — the 
burning  and  spreading  moral  cancer  of  the  Grover  Cleve- 
land cult — was  its  placing  the  national  seal  upon  the 
Luciferian  doctrines  that  the  sacredness  of  human  per- 
sonality may  be  disregarded  and  desecrated  provided  the 
person  be  a  woman,  and  also  that  if  manhood  be  industri- 
ous and  faithful  in  its  business  and  official  relations  with 
other  manhood,  it  may,  without  personal  loss  or  disgrace, 
treat  womanhood  as  a  "  thing  "  for  "  pleasure  "  merely. 

For  if  this  be  true,  although  the  great  Federated  Repub- 
lic of  the  United.  States  is  founded  on  the  "  Brotherhood 
of  Man,"  its  twin  and  inseparable  principle — the  Sister- 
hood of  Woman — has  therein  no  place. 

Practically  this  had  been  the  position  of  the  Democratic 
Party  from  the  beginning.  Its  founder,  Thomas  Jefferson 
— that  marvellous  and  many-sided  humanitarian  with 
heart  seemingly  as  wide  as  the  race  itself — in  all  his 
thoughts,  in  all  his  plans,  in  all  his  aspirations,  bore  in 
fact  only  one-half  the  race  either  on  his  heart  or  in  his 
mind.  In  his  day  men  had  not  extended  education  to 
women,  and  women,  therefore,  were  not  yet  self-con- 
scious, nor  were  men  yet  conscious  of  them  except  as 
*'  one-half  the  race  told  off  as  a  sub-species  for  reproduc- 
tion."    Women  owned  absolutely  nothing.     A  woman's 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  493 

person,  her  children,  her  time,  her  labor,  her  inheritance, 
her  earnings — even  the  very  clothes  upon  her  back  which 
she  herself  had  spun,  woven  and  made — belonged  to  her 
husband.  The  common  law  permitted  her  husband  to  beat 
her  "  in  moderation,"  and  the  common  proverb  upheld  the 
law  by  the  opinion  that  "  A  woman,  a  dog  and  a  walnut- 
tree,  The  more  you  beat  'em  the  better  they  be."  Every- 
thing that  a  woman  had  or  was  was  of  manhood  suffer- 
ance, or  pity,  or  chivalry — not  of  justice;  what  she  won 
for  herself  within  her  little  home-sphere  was  the  personal 
reward  of  her  personal  devotion,  skill,  tact  or  charm, 
and  not  at  all  because  she  was  a  fellow  human  being.     . 

It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  Jefferson,  so  far-see- 
ing in  his  luminous  pre-vision  for  the  best  interests  of  his 
own  sex,  should  have  overlooked  entirely  those  of  the 
other.  To  this  day  the  only  woman  even  a  Christian  man 
admits  unreservedly  to  his  own  plane  is  his  own  wedded 
wife,  and  Jefferson's  exquisite  wife  was  all  too  early  taken 
from  him.  His  passionate  devotion  to  this  idol  of  his 
youth  led  him  to  the  rash  death-bed  promise  which  no 
mortal  should  ever  make — namely,  that  he  would  never 
marry  again. 

Far  different  might  have  been  his  own  record  and  that 
of  his  great  party  had  this  adored  companion  been  by  his 
side  throughout  his  long  illustrious  career.  For,  as  the 
lonely  years  went  on,  who  can  measure  their  temptations 
to  this  sensitive  and  craving  spirit?  From  youth  Jefferson 
had  loved  France;  he  held  Jesus  Christ  to  have  been  but 
human  like  himself,  and  thus  the  morality  of  France, 
instead  of  the  morality  of  Deity,  became  his  personal 
morality.  True  in  the  external  sense  to  the  memory  of 
his  beloved  (since  he  never  married  again),  in  reality  he 
let  himself  be  false  to  her  and  to  all  her  sex. 


V 

494  -VEll^   YGRa:    a    SYMPI-IOXIC  STUDY. 

And  so,  in  retribution,  the  benign  scheme  of  his  politics 
remained  imperfect,  for  it  concerned  itself  with  only  one- 
half  the  citizenship.  Like  a  mist  his  own  unfaith  to 
womanhood  shrouded  from  him  the  Divine  Eternal  Fem- 
inine and  its  claims.  "  Freedom,"  said  De  Tocqueville, 
"  cannot  exist  without  morals,  and  morals  are  the  work 
of  women."  Rather^morals  are  women,  but  men,  with 
their  standards,  with  their  customs,  mould  the  women, 
and  the  women,  so  moulded,  mould  the  sons.  The  scheme 
of  Jefferson  safeguarded  to  the  utmost  manhood's  most 
precious  possession — his  personal  freedom;  but  woman- 
hood's similar  possession — her  personal  honor — he  safe- 
guarded not  at  all. 

He  forgot  the  Lily  Girlhood  whose  foundation  right  it  is 
to  walk  untempted  and  unsullied  through  the  world  to  its 
bridal  home.  He  forgot  the  Mysterious  Motherhood  from 
whose  soul  and  body  for  nine  pre-natal  months  the  soul 
and  body  of  each  generation  must  draw  its  life,  and  which, 
therefore,  must  be  guarded  as  the  very  sacrosanct  of  the 
Republic.  Like  the  dream-image  of  King  Nebuchadnez- 
zar, whose  head  was  of  "  fine  gold,"  its  breast  of  "  silver," 
its  trunk  of  "  brass,"  its  legs  of  "  iron,"  but  its  feet  of 
"  iron  mixed  with  miry  clay,"  the  glorious  political  fabric 
he  left  to  his  country  was  builded  of  divinest  humanitarian 
truths,  but  the  first  and  divinest  of  them  all — ''  they  twain 
shall  be  one  flesh  " — which  is^  nothing  else  than  the  law 
that  man's  and  woman's  honor  are  one  and  indivisible — 
was  not  laid  as  its  immortal,  immutable  base. 

This  explains  why  the  Democratic  Party  proved  totally 
unable  to  cope  with  the  Slavery  Question.  In  its  counsels 
the  sacredness  of  the  personality  and  the  inz'iolability  of 
the  marriage  of  the  slave  woman  equally  with  those  of 
the  white  woman  were  never  taken  into  the  account;  yet 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  495 

these  negations  it  was  which,  placed  by  Mrs.  Stowe  in  the 
forefront  of  her  epoch-making  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
touched  the  northern  conscience  to  the  quick,  and  within 
fifteen  years  of  its  publication  resulted  in  the  violent 
abolition  of  the  Institution.  "  Is  this  the  little  woman," 
cried  President  Lincoln,  when  Mrs.  Stowe  was  presented 
to  him,  "  who  brought  on  this  great  war?  " 

That  the  awful  outcome  of  that  war  for  the  South  with 
its  long  subsequent  exclusion  from  power  had  brought  no 
change  of  heart  and  therefore  no  wisdom  to  the  Demo- 
cratic Party,  was  evidenced  by  its  elevation  of  Grover 
Cleveland  as  its  national  standard-bearer  and  by  its  re- 
tention of  him  as  such  throughout  twelve  years. 

"  The  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God!'' 

In  a  special  sense  the  Art  of  Government  is  the  Art  of 
God,  because  it  is  the  Art  of  Justice — of  Establishing 
Right  Relations — and  that  party  or  that  nation  which 
most  nearly  establishes  divine  justice  and  "  right  rela- 
tions "  between  man  and  woman  is  the  party  and  the 
nation  that  "  thinks  clear  and  sees  straight "  in  all  other 
relations  and  which  in  the  end,  therefore,  will  "  win  out !  " 
The  smile  of  Deity  is  with  it;  the  strength  of  Deity  is 
in  it.  In  the  long  run  it  always  has  the  "  heaviest  bat- 
talions." 


CHAPTER   LXVIII. 

"  FROM    BAD   TO    WORSE." 

Since  the  first  chapters  of  this  book  were  put  into  type, 
twelve  years  have  elapsed,  and  as  I  write,  the  respective 
adherents  of  President  Roosevelt  and  of  Judge  Alton  B. 
Parker  are  waging  for  them  the  presidential  campaign  of 
1904.* 

Whether  or  no  the  failure  of  the  Democratic  Party  to 
hold  its  once  triumphant  leadership  of  the  American 
people,  or,  when  lost,  to  recover  it,  be  owing  to  the  causes 
indicated  by  the  writer,  certain  it  is  that  for  years  that 
great  party  has  been  plunging  like  a  derelict  through  the 
waves — destitute  equally  of  chart,  compass  and  sails. 

It  arrives  nowhere.  So  divided  are  its  counsels  that 
politically  it  knows  not  where  it  wishes  to  arrive.  Per- 
sonally it  is  wild  to  arrive — its  leaders  for  the  sake  of 
place  and  power,  its  rank  and  file  for  the  loaves  and  fishes 
which  go  with  power;  and  this  sums  up  its  whole  ignoble 
soul. 

Senator  J.  J.  Ingalls  said  in  the  United  States  Senate 
in  1888:  "The  nomination  and  election  of  Grover  Cleve- 
land have  made  the  pretensions  of  any  American  citizen 
to  the  Presidency  respectable.  There  is  no  man  in  this 
country  whose  ignorance  is  so  profound,  whose  obscurity 
is  so  impenetrable  and  whose  antecedents  are  so  degraded 

*  These  last  chapters  were  in  the  hands  of  my  printers,  J.  J.  Little 
&  Co.,  New  York,  in  the  October  before  the  election. 


XEIV    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  497 

that  he  may  not  justifiably  aspire  to  a  presidential  nomina- 
tion by — the  Democratic  Party." 

Literally  has  this  scathing  dictum  been  fulfilled.  Led 
through  two  presidential  campaigns  by  a  magnetic  young 
orator  who  from  the  remote  insignificance  of  Nebraska 
was  lifted  to  the  party  leadership  on  the  strength  of  a 
single  sensational  simile  in  a  single  speech,  it  has  now 
largely  become  a  convert  to  the  fierce  and  cynical  socialism 
of  the  California  degenerate  and  demagogue  who,  a  can- 
didate for  the  Democratic  presidential  nomination,  and  in 
the  spirit  in  which  Judas  sold  his  Master  for  thirty  pieces 
of  silver,  tried  this  year  (1904)  to  buy  that  nomination 
with  his  thirty  millions  of  gold  in  hope  of  then  seating 
himself  with  all  his  "  unspeakable  "  past  in  the  chair  of 
George  Washington !  * 

The  last  of  the  great  Jeffersonian  Democrats,  Abram 
S.  Hewitt,  of  New  York,  not  long  before  his  death,  in 
1903,  repudiated  the  party  of  his  life-long  allegiance  be- 
cause it  had  "  lost  all  its  principles." 

How  did  it  lose  them?  Chiefly  through  the  political 
innovators  allhded  to,  William  Jennings  Bryan  and  Wil- 
liam Randolph  Hearst,  who  simply  by  calling  themselves 
"  Democrats,"  for  years  have  exploited  the  party  as  a 
pedestal  for  their  presidential  aspirations,  and  meantime 
have  actually  been  reversing  the  teachings  of  its  founders 
— and  yet  the  party  has  not  seemed  to  know  it. 

Lrom  the  beginning  a  party  for  "hard  money" — for 
an  "  honest  "  dollar,  whether  of  gold,  of  silver,  or  of  paper 
in  return  for  that  dollar's  worth  of  honest  labor  which  is 
the  unit  value  of  them  all — the  presidential  campaigns  of 
1896  and  1900  were  fought  out  on  the  old  sixteen-to-one 

•  See  speech  of  Mr.  Johnson  of  California,  Congressional  Record, 
Jan.  8,  1897,  for  the  William  R.  Hearst  moral  record! 


49^  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ratio  of  silver  to  gold,  though  the  ratio  had  fallen  nearly 
fifty  to  one ! 

A  vital  Jeffersonian  dogma  being  that  "the  best  gov- 
ernment is  that  which  governs  least " — which  least  ham- 
pers the  industrial  organization  of  private  citizens — in  the 
face,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  matchless  success  of  the 
free  individual  enterprise  which  has  created  the  prodigious 
wealth  and  power  of  this  Republic,  and,  on  the  other,  of 
the  almost  universal  municipal  corruption  brought  upon 
it  by  its  foreign  office-holders  and  voters — Mr.  Hearst's 
papers  cease  not  to  clamor  for  the  public  ownership  and 
management  of  all  public  utilities.  Not  content  with  the 
foreign  looting  of  our  municipahties,  in  return  for  foreign 
votes  he  would  give  up  to  similar  foreign  looting  all  our 
corporate  industries ! 

Again,  if  there  were  any  supreme  principle  immortally 
bound  up  with  the  name  of  Jefferson,  surely  it  was  that 
"  all  just  government  rests  upon  the  consent  of  the  gov- 
erned ; "  yet,  the  morning  after  the  destruction  of  the 
Spanish  fleet  in  Manila  Bay  by  Admiral  Dewey,  and  be- 
fore his  American  fellow-citizens  had  thought  or  even 
dreamed  of  the  military  conquest  and  holding  of  the 
Filipino  people  by  the  American  people — the  Hearst 
papers  came  flaring  out  on  their  front  pages  with  big 
headlines,  "  OUR  COLONIES  :  THE  PHILIPPINES  !  " 
and  within  a  week  on  the  same  pages  flaunted  a  great  illus- 
tration of  a  seated  negro  surrounded  by  standing  negresses 
as  "  OUR  SULTAN  AND  HIS  HAREM !  " 

Finally,  if  there  were  a  cause  to  the  glory  and  exalta- 
tion of  which  the  whole  illustrious  life  of  Jefferson  was 
devoted — it  was  to  the  cause  of  peace,  the  life-giving,  the 
happiness-creating,  over  war,  the  desolating,  the  death- 
dealing,  the  agony-causing;  yet  this  same  so-called  "  Dem- 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  499 

ocratic  "  editor,  from  his  great  dailies  in  the  leading  mu- 
nicipal centres,  ceaselessly  rubs  and  has  rubbed  into  the 
untaught,  unthinking  multitudes  who  are  his  readers  the 
duty  and  the  necessity  of  great  "  war  colleges  "  and  "  naval 
uriiversities,"  wherein  more  and  more  soldiers  and  sailors 
may  be  trained  and  sent  forth  ever  more  and  more  to  en- 
courage and  foster  in  the  American  people  that  military 
passion  which  has  been  the  sure  forerunner  of  empires 
and  monarchies  since  the  world  began. 

"  These  he  thy  gods,  0  Israel!''  and  these  the  standards 
and  ideals  of  the  up-to-date  Democratic  Party — the  once 
Party  of  Jefferson — under  its  dominating  leaders,  Bryan 
and  Hearst. 

Throughout  this  present  year  (1904)  capitalists  and 
lawyers  have  been  striving  behind  the  scenes  to  "  get 
together  "  the  various  factions  of  the  party — the  old-time 
Democracy  of  the  South,  the  Free-Silver  Democracy  of 
the  West,  the  Socialist  Democracy  of  Hearst,  and  the 
Irish  Catholic  Democracy  of  the  cities — into  a  "  sane  and 
safe  Democracy,"  which,  under  a  "  sane  and  safe  "  leader, 
may  once  more  command  the  confidence  and  the  affec- 
tions of  a  majority  of  the  American  people. 

Will  they  succeed?  Can  they  succeed  when  the 
"steerer"  chiefly  in  evidence  is  the  ex-Governor  who  was 
implicated  in  the  stealing  of  his  State  in  1892  in  order  to 
seat  a  Democrat  instead  of  a  Republican  in  the  United 
States  Senate,  and  when  the  other  active  party  managers 
by  their  very  names,  Sheehan — McCarren — Murphy — 
Doyle  —  Farrell  —  Guffey  —  Gorman  —  Cockran  —  Ryan 
— Taggart — are  plainly  of  the  race  and  religion  most 
antagonistic  to  this  still  six-to-one  Protestant  people? 

Why,  this  very  race,  on  the  principle  of  rats  deserting 
a  ship  that  they  have  honeycombed,  is  openly  going  over 


500  A^EW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

to  the  opposition !  The  Boston  Pilot,  long  the  standard 
Irish  Catholic  organ,  and  the  New  York  Sun,  equally 
though  not  so  frankly  such,  have  declared  for  President 
Roosevelt,  and  an  "  Irish-American  Republican  Associa- 
tion "  to  advance  the  Roosevelt  interests  is  already  in  the 
field.  "  Where  the  carcass  is  there  are  the  vultures  gath- 
ered together,"  says  the  Scripture.  The  Catholic  Irish 
are  nothing  if  not  office-seekers,  and  President  Roosevelt, 
for  his  re-election,  humors  them  to  the  top  of  their  bent. 
As  the  Protector  of  the  new  Catholic  Republics  of  Cuba 
and  Panama  and  the  Creator  of  the  latter — as  the  Au- 
tocrat of  our  Catholic  Colonies  of  Porto  Rico  and  the 
Philippines — he  has  done  everything  in  those  Spanish- 
American  countries,  whether  constitutional,  Christian  or 
otherwise,  that  the  Catholic  Irish  wished  him  to  do;  he 
has  done  nothing  that  they  did  not  wish  him  to  do;  they 
own  him  as  much  as  they  can  own  any  non-Catholic 
President — so  why  should  they  not  vote  for  him? 

It  is  hard  on  the  Democratic  Party,  since  if  the  master 
demagogue,  Hearst,  had  his  political  dues.  He,  rather  than 
Roosevelt,  would  have  been  on  the  ticket  with  McKinley 
in  1900  and  hence  the  president  and  presidential  candidate 
to-day — for  the  present  "  anti-trust,"  "  military,"  "  colon- 
ial," "  do-things,"  "  world-power  "  policy  of  the  Republican 
Party  was  first  formulated  and  demanded,  as  we  have  just 
seen,  by  the  Hearst  newspapers.  Roosevelt  merely  added 
to  it  the  "  rough-rider,"  rough-shod  element — especially 
the  rough-shod ! 


CHAPTER   LXIX. 

"^AND   WORSE    REMAINS    BEHIND  !  " 

The  New  York  Journal  was  founded  in  1884  by  Albert 
Pulitzer,  the  younger  brother  of  Joseph  Pulitzer,  as  a  one- 
cent  paper  for  the  East  Side  masses.  In  ten  years  Pulitzer 
had  made  a  fortune  out  of  it,  but,  becoming  a  hypochon- 
driac, he  sold  it  to  John  McLean,  of  the  Cincinnati  En- 
quirer. He  in  turn  disposed  of  it  to  Mrs.  Phoebe  Hearst, 
who  bought  it  for  her  son  in  the  hope,  so  it  is  said,  of  get- 
ting him  away  from  the  associations  to  which  he  was  com- 
mitted in  his  native  San  Francisco. 

Coming  to  New  York  backed  by  his  mother  s  enormous 
fortune  and  by  his  own  "  yellow  "  success  with  his  own 
San  Francisco  Examiner,  the  young  editor  soon  secured 
at  the  highest  salaries  an  assisting  corps  of  the  brilliant 
but  mercenary  minds  yearly  turned  out  of  our  godless 
schools  and  universities,  and  then  set  them  to  out-yellow 
the  creator  of  yellow  journalism,  Joseph  Pulitzer  himself, 
and  as  a  sensation-monger  to  displace,  if  possible,  the 
World  by  the  Journal. 

That  this  would  not  be  easy  may  be  inferred  from  a  de- 
scription of  the  World  of  about  that  period  by  the  editor 
of  Town  Topics,  the  "  yellow  "  society  weekly  of  New 
York  and  special  chronicle  of  its  "  Four  Hundred :  " 

The  New  York  World  is  attempting  to  show  that  the  increase  of 
crime  in  this  locality  is  due  to  the  lax  and  incompetent  condition  of 
the  police  force  under  the  management  of  the  Roosevelt  board  of  com- 
missioners. The  increase  of  crime  here  is  due  more  directly  to  the 
increase  of  Joseph  Pulitzer.  No  single  agent  known  to-day  so  ex- 
cites,  degrades  and   vitiates  the  criminal  and  brainless  classes  as 


502  NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

does  a  newspaper  conducted  upon  the  indecent  lines  pursued  by  the 
World.  This  blatant,  heartless  and  brutal  sheet  is  a  pattern  for  all 
men  that  are  blatant,  heartless  and  brutal,  and  it  will  require  a 
wonderful  police  force  indeed  to  cope  with  the  desperate  acts  that 
are  traceable  to  the  vicious  teachings  of  this  inhuman  journal.  The 
World  is  a  moral  cholera.  Max  Nordau  dwelt  recently  upon  the 
theory  of  degeneracy  in  the  human  race.  The  World  is  the  organ 
of  degenerates.  It  assists  them  every  day  in  the  year  to  become 
more  degenerate.  It  attacks  weak  minds  and  destroys  them.  It 
fills  feverish  minds  with  sulphurous  fumes.  It  sickens  struggling 
souls  with  the  stench  of  the  charnel  house.  To  the  eye  it  is  an 
offense,  to  the  sense  a  scourge.  No  city  can  hope  to  be  peaceable 
and  pure  when  the  newspaper  that  is  read  more  than  all  its  competi- 
tors is  a  reckless  and  immoral  collection  of  sensations  founded  upon 
ignorance  and  cruelty.  There  will  be  more  murders,  more  crimes  of 
every  character,  because  the  World  is  published  each  morning, 
poisoning  the  air  of  heaven  and  the  heart  of  the  human  race.  It  is 
a  thing  to  be  burned,  not  read. 

And  this  sheet  was  not  only  to  be  equalled;  it  was  to  be 
surpassed ! 

Surpassed  accordingly  it  was  by  adding  to  every  element 
above  catalogued  cartoons  devilish  and  degraded  almost 
beyond  conception  in  mockery  of  the  "  Trusts  "  and  equally 
of  the  United  States  as  "Uncle  Sam";  by  an  editorial  page 
most  of  whose  paragraphs  were  calculated  truth-slayers 
from  the  bottomless  pit;  by  a  Sunday  issue  which  trained 
children  in  tricks,  irreverence,  coarseness,  cruelty  and  lies, 
and — as  a  sentimental  make-weight  against  these  infamies 
— by  espousing  the  cause  of  revolted  Cuba. 

As  has  been  said  before,  nothing  being  so  popular  after 
a  long  peace  as  war — to  create  the  public  indignation 
which  resulted  in  the  declaration  of  war  against  Spain  and 
at  the  same  time  sold  the  Hearst  papers,  Hearst  money 
was  poured  out  literally  by  multi-millions.  Whether  any 
of  that  money  went  to  the  Cuban  Junta,  whether  that  Junta 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  503 

bribed  some  Spanish  official  to  blow  up  the  Maine  in  the 
harbor  of  Havana  in  order  to  bring  American  indignation 
against  the  "  Spanish  atrocities  "  to  the  exploding  point, 
will  probably  never  be  known  until  the  Great  Day  gives 
up  its  secrets.  What  is  certain  is  that  James  Creelman, 
the  then  Journal  reporter,  openly  boasted  that  he  "  and 
three  other  men  brought  on  the  Spanish  war !  " 

The  Christian  and  peace-loving  President  McKinley 
shuddered  and  shrank  before  the  Rubicon  toward  which 
Hearst  was  forcing  him,  but  the  masterful  Republicans  by 
whom  the  President  was  surrounded  hesitated  not.  \i  the 
Republican  Party  did  not  now  couch  the  national  lance 
and  run  a  national  tilt  for  bleeding  Cuba,  the  Democrats, 
goaded  by  Hearst,  certainly  would,  and  then  theirs  would 
be  the  credit  and  the  prestige,  and  at  the  next  presidential 
election  the  inevitable  presidential  reward.  Since  war 
there  was  to  be,  the  Grand  Old  Party  must  still  be  the  na- 
tional standard-bearer. 

Clever,  therefore,  supernally,  satanically  clever  though 
the  San  Franciscan  had  shown  himself,  the  astute  and 
vigilant  Republican  leaders  proved  still  cleverer.  They 
seized  the  "  bald  lock  of  opportunity  "  that  was  rushing 
toward  them.  They,  and  not  the  Democratic  Party,  sad- 
dled and  bridled  the  war  steed  which  the  Hearst  news- 
papers had  been  so  carefully  training;  all  booted  and 
spurred  they  vaulted  into  that  saddle,  and  there,  in  the 
person  of  Theodore  Roosevelt  of  New  York,  are  they 
riding  confidently,  triumphantly,  flamboyantly  to-day.* 
The  Napoleonic  young  editor  was  hoist  practically  with 
his  own  petard — his  best  guns  stolen  and  turned  upon 
his  hopes. 

*  *  ♦  ♦  ♦  4c  41 

*  See  President  Roosevelt's  letter  of  acceptance,  September,  1904. 


S04         NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

And  so  seems  the  great  Party  of  Jefferson  to  be  finally 
succumbing,  wounded  to  the  death  in  the  house  of  its 
friends,  yes,  in  that  great  city  of  New  York  which  since 
the  civil  war  has  been  its  stronghold  and  headquarters, 
and  of  which,  when  it  was  yet  a  small  sea-port,  Jefferson 
wrote :  "  New  York,  like  London,  seems  to  he  a  sewer  of 
all  the  depravities  of  human  nature." 

Strange  that  in  this  phrase  Jefferson,  almost  as  a  prophet, 
should  have  struck  the  New  York  "  symphonic  "  keynote 
which,  since  she  is  still  the  chief  American  inlet  for  the 
ceaseless  flood  of  foreign  immigration,  still  persists  unto 
this  day — dreadful — desperate — discordant  with  all  right 
Americanism  and  determined,  if  possible,  to  deafen  and 
drown  all  right  Americanism  out. 

The  foulest  dregs  of  this  foreign  flood  forever  fall  and 
settle  in  the  New  York  secret  depths,  but  their  mephitic 
exhalations  so  narcotize  her  whole  people  that  even  her 
reformers,  philanthropists  and  clergymen  are  morally 
brain-dulled  and  confused,  and  know  not  what,, for  her  re- 
generation, they  would  be  at. 

Though  Society  and  Politics  are  loudly  and  passionately 
demanding  reorganization  from  the  top  to  the  bottom, 
these  potter  and  palter  with  "  Charity  Organizations," 
"  Schools  of  Philanthropy,"  *'  University  Settlements," 
"  Societies  for  the  Prevention  of  Poverty  and  Vice," 
"  Citizens'  Unions,"  "  City  Clubs,"  "  Societies  for  Political 
Education."  "  Municipal  Leagues,"  etc.,  etc.,  each  compris- 
ing a  special  little  set  of  its  own  which  revolves  about  and 
swears  by  some  more  or  less  inadequate  leader — with  the 
eternal  result  that  three  times  out  of  four  they  lose 
and  the  enemy  gains  and  at  each  gain  strengthens,  and 
thus  New  York  grows  steadily  more  and  more  wicked, 
more  and  more  irreclaimable,  more  and  more  hopeless, 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  5oS 

her  present  official  head  being  a  renegade  American  who 
sold  the  stainless  name  he  inherited  from  his  brave  and 
brilliant  father  to  the  Irish  Catholic  Tammany  Hall  in 
return  for  office,  first  as  a  Tammany  Congressman  and 
then  as  the  Tammany  Mayor. 

How  sorrowful,  how  inconceivable,  that  this  glorious 
new  continent,  instead  of  evolving  from  her  virgin  bosom 
a  "  New  Jerusalem,"  should  cancer  there  but  the  Old 
Babylon — the  blazing  "  Scarlet  Woman  "  whose  cap  and 
bells  of  gayety  and  pleasure  so  thrill  even  the  quietest 
little  hamlets  as  to  draw  irresistibly  their  quota  into  her 
tainted  veins,  there  to  become  in  turn  the  blood-poison 
which  she  ever  pulsates  into  the  remotest  corners  of  the 
mighty  land ! 

"  Tammany  town,  Tammany  town, 
Old  Nick's  throne,  seat  of  his  crown. 
How  have  ye  pulled  yourself  so  down, 

Tammany  town  ? 
What  is  the  maggot  that's  got  your  brain, 

Tammany  town  ? 
Turning  your  back  with  a  strange  disdain 
On  all  that  was  good  for  all  that  is  pain — 
Making  your  hope  of  the  future  vain  ? 

Tammany  town  ! 

*'  Proudest  of  cities  ye  might  have  been, 

Tammany  town? 
Surest  of  cities  to  rule  as  Queen, 
Fair  as  the  fairest  mankind  has  seen, 
Down  you  plunge  in  a  ruck  obscene, 

Tammany  town  ! 

*•  What  have  you  done  with  your  honored  name, 
Tammany  town  ! 
What  have  ye  cared  for  your  envied  fame, 
Tammany  town  ? 


5o6  NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Better  the  torch  and  better  the  flame 
Than  this  choice  of  a  life  of  lust  and  shame 
At  the  beck  of  the  host  of  thieves  that  came — 
Lost  Tammany  town  !  "  * 

From  her  American  vantage-ground  of  New  York  will 
the  Scarlet  Woman — Mother  and  Nurse  of  despotism, 
poverty  and  woe,  as  She  ever  is — in  the  end  win  this  land 
as  she  already  has  nearly  every  other  for  her  Master, 
the  "Great  Dragon,"  the  "Beast,"  with  his  "horns"  of 
golden  pride  and  his  "crowns"  of  golden  power? 

Or  will  a  renewed  Americanism,  pure,  strong  and  united, 
seeing  things  as  God  sees  them  and  beginning  where  God 
would  begin  for  their  redemption,  yet  one  day  transform 
the  "  lost  Tammany  Town  "  into  that  Vision  City  which 
so  long,  long  ago  was  promised  as  the  "  Joy  "  of  the 
whole  earth? 

*  "  Lines  to  a  Lost   City,  1897." — John  Kendrick  Bangs. 
END    OF  PART   I. 


» 


PART  II 
THE  CELESTIAL  CONCORD 

OR 

THE  GOSPEL  ACCORDING  TO 
WOMANHOOD. 


PART  II. 

THE  CELESTIAL  CONCORD 

OR 

THE  GOSPEL  ACCORDING  TO 
WOMANHOOD. 

Prelude   1 

I     Deity 5 

II     Soul    10 

III  Lucifer U 

IV  Hell 24 

V    The  Game  of  Souls 32 

VI     The  Serpent  vs.  Womanhood 40 

VII     The  Race  Tragedy 46 

VIII     Jesus  the  Emancipator 53 

IX     "  The  Spirit  " 58 

X    Jesus  and  the  Spirit 69 

XI     The  Perfect   74 

XII     The  "  Fourth  Gospel  "  83 

XIII  The  Author's  Apology 85 

XIV  Proclamation    90 

XV    Other  Visions  of  the  Divine  Feminine. . .  99 

XVI     Ideal   Womanhood   105 


ACTS  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


XVn     Acts  of  the  Church :     The  Enemy  Sows 

Tares 108 

XVHI    Acts    of    the    Church:      The    "Truth" 

Makes  "  Free  "  115 

XIX     MascuHnism    118 

XX     Mistress  Hutchinson  and  MascuHnism. .  121 


NEW  YORK 


A    SYMPHONIC    STUDY. 
PART  II.—THE   CELESTIAL   CONCORD. 


PRELUDE. 

The  great  though  youthful  poet  Keats,  becoming  a  dis- 
coverer in  ivomanhood  through  his  intense  passion  for  his 
betrothed,  exclaimed  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "  Why  should 
woman  suifer?  Ay,  why  should  she?  By  heaven,  to  know 
I'd  coin  my  very  soul  and  drop  my  blood  in  drachmas. 
These  things  are,  and  he  who  feels  how  incompetent  is  the 
most  skyey  knight-errantry  to  heal  this  bruised  fairness  is 
like  a  sensitive  leaf  on  the  hot  palm  of  thought/* 

When  the  writer  was  about  fourteen  she  became  aware 
in  some  way  now  forgotten  that  there  existed  in  the  world 
a  class  of  her  own  sex  devoted  to  degradation  so  dreadful 
that  even  their  own  families  coidd  not  and  would  not 
speak  to  them. 

They  were  "  outcasts  " — cast  out ! 

And  since  the  world  began  there  had  always  been  these 
outcasts. 

And  while  the  world  went  on  there  would  always  be 
these  outcasts. 


2  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

There  was  no  hope;  for  they  were  a  "  necessary  evil." 

Now  her  own  love  of  her  ozvn  family  was  at  that  period 
the  dominant  passion  of  her  soul. 

Understanding  not  at  all  the  horrific  significance  of  the 
social  condition  which  had  dawned  upon  her,  the  special 
aspect  that  took  hold  of  and  shook  her  being  to  its  depths 
was  that  these  so-called  "  outcasts  "  were  never  recognized 
nor  spoken  to  nor  spoken  of  even  by  their  own  fathers 
and  mothers  and  sisters  and  brothers.  They  were  utterly 
shut  out  from  home  and  home  love. 

To  her  this  seemed  an  abyss  of  woe  so  black  that  it 
could  not  be  "necessary."  God  was  too  loving  and  too 
tender  and  too  just  to  permit  such  a  fate  to  be  in  the  in- 
evitable, immutable  order  of  his  providence.  There  must 
be  sofue  way  out  of  if — some  solution  to  the  problem  which 
had  never  been  thought  of. 

The  Bible  story  that  the  youthful  Solomon  had  prayed 
to  God  for  " wisdom''  and  that  wisdom  had  been  given  to 
him,  had  in  childhood  vividly  impressed  the  writer's 
religious  imagination. 

And,  on  behalf  of  his  Divine  Father,  her  Saviour  had 
promised  similarly  to  answer  all  prayers  for  heavenly 
guidance  and  wisdom  from  all  that  believe  in  Him. 

She,  then,  would  thereafter  pray  to  God  to  show  her  the 
true  way  to  cure  or  prevent  this  so-called  "  necessary " 
evil. 

And  so  for  many  years  her  daily  prayers  included  these 
petitions : 

"  O  God^  make  me  to  see  Thee  as  Thou  art; 

"  And  to  love  Thee  as  Thou  dost  wish  to  be  loved; 

"  And  help  me  to  help  women — 

"For  Jesus'  sake.    Amen." 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  3 

The  pages  of  Part  One  of  this  Symphonic  Study  have 
tried  to  indicate  the  stealthy  but  continuous  destruction 
wrought  in  family  and  in  national  life  by  this  burning  sub- 
surface "  evil "  which,  ever  creeping  and  coiling  about  the 
hidden  roots  of  Home  and  Country,  is  ever  eating  them 
fatally  away. 

The  pages  of  Part  Two  offer  what  the  writer  believes 
to  be  God's  answer  to  her  prayer.  Its  central  thought 
came  to  her  as  a  glorious,  joyous,  regenerating,  life-giving 
Truth — in  the  summer  of  1859,  when  she  was  twenty-three 
years  old.  She  has  since  kept  it  mostly  "  in  her  heart," 
rarely  speaking  of  it,  even  to  friends,  but  waiting  for  the 
"  call "  she  knew  must  come  in  God's  good  time  to  give  it 
to  the  world. 

That  "  call "  she  believes  to  be  here  and  now. 

For  nearly  nineteen  centuries  the  world  has  had  the 
"Gospel  according  to  Matthew,"  the  "Gospel  according 
to  Mark,"  the  "  Gospel  according  to  Luke,"  and  the  "  Gos- 
pel according  to  John  " — all  Gospels  "  according  to  "  Men, 
and  all  of  them  taught  and  expounded  quite  exclusively 
by  men  through  all  those  hundreds  of  years — and  still  the 
world  is  not  converted. 

Now,  therefore,  let  the  Christian  Teachers  of  the  world, 
from  the  highest  to  the  humblest,  add  to  these  Mighty 
Manhood  Gospels'  the  following  Gospel  according  to 
Womanhood  as  derived  from  those  Gospels,  and  the  great 
Pagan  World,  whether  within  or  without  the  pale  of  so- 
called  "  Christendom,"  will  surely  and  swiftly  be  con- 
verted. If  the  Christian  Teachers  will  not  so  add  it,  let 
them  then  in  the  writer's  spirit  pray  her  prayer  until  from 
the  Divine  Eternal  Trinity  descends  a  diviner  answer  to 
their  petition  than  was  vouchsafed  to  hers. 

Let  them  do  one  or  the  other  of  these,  or  at  the  Last 


4  JVEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Great  Day  let  them  expect  to  he  challenged  by  all  the 
Desecrated  Girlhood  and  Degraded  Womanhood  and  Lu- 
ciferian  Manhood  they  might  have  prevented,  but  would 
not,  through  this  Gospel. 


CHAPTER  I. 

DEITY. 

If  God  exists  for  happiness,  for  bliss — and  there  is  no 
other  adequate  reason  for  which  God  can  exist — then  the 
Unitarian  theory  of  God  is  untenable;  for  an  infinite  Cre- 
ator with  only  his  finite  creatures  for  companions  would 
be  a  God  alone  in  the  universe,  practically,  therefore,  a 
God  in  hell  quite  in  the  same  manner  as  would  be  a  highly 
cultivated  human  being  with  no  companion  nearer  to  him- 
self than  some  motionless  statue  that  he  had  carved  or 
some  moving  mechanism  that  he  had  constructed.  For 
Deity  to  be  in  bliss,  Deity  must  be  companioned  by  Deity, 
and  this  requirement  of  divine  or  infinite  happiness  is 
completely  met  by  the  Bible  teaching  that  the  creative  and 
sustaining  force  of  the  universe  is  a  Divine  Eternal 
Trinity  of  Father,  Mother  and  Only  Son— the  "  Mother  " 
being  veiled  throughout  the  Scriptures  under  the  terms 
"  The  Spirit,"  "  Wisdom,"  "  The  Holy  Ghost,"  "  The  Com- 
forter" and  "The  Woman  clothed  with  the  sun  and 
crowned  with  the  stars  and  with  the  moon  under  her  feet." 

The  separate  Persons  or  Individualities  of  this  Divine 
Eternal  Trinity  are  not  confounded  nor  merged  in  one 
consciousness.  Their  Divine  Minds  do  not  mutually  pene- 
trate and  mingle  as  the  air  of  three  communicating  rooms 
interpenetrates  and  mingles.  Relatively  to  Each  Other 
these  Infinite  Minds,  even  as  our  own  to  our  associates, 
are  distinct  and  spherical  and  think  their  own  thoughts 
and  keep  their  own  counsel  until  They  see  fit  to  share 


6  NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

them — as  was  clearly  indicated  by  the  Divine  Son  when 
in  speaking  of  the  Day  of  Judgment  He  said :  "  About 
that  day  and  hour  no  one  has  any  knowledge,  not  even 
the  angels  of  heaven,  nor  yet  the  Son  Himself,  but  only 
the  Father."  *  The  Eternal  Three  constitute  "  One  God  " 
simply  because,  being  All-knowing,  it  is  impossible  for 
Them  to  differ  and  therefore  They  are  absolutely  At  One 
in  Counsel;  and  being  at  the  same  time  All-loving,  They 
are  absolutely  At  One  in  Purpose.  The  Law  of  Love,  or 
Law  of  Giving  Everything,  being  the  chosen  law  of  their 
being,  self-seeking  and  jealousy  between  Them  are  im- 
possible ;  Each  forever  exalts  the  Other  Two  before  Itself, 
and  thus  it  is  that  They  present  to  the  adoration  of  the 
objective  universe  a  Self-existent,  Co-equal,  Omniscient, 
Omnipresent  and  Omnipotent  Triumvirate  of  Three 
Divine  Persons  absolutely  At  One  in  Counsel  and  in  Pur- 
pose, and,  therefore,  in  relation  to  that  universe,  but  One 
Only  God. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  independence  and  sphericity  of 
these  Infinite  Eternal  Beings  Each  within.  Itself  adds  to 
their  inexhaustible  bliss  in  Each  Other  an  element  which 
would  otherwise  be  lacking.. 

A  famous  philosopher  so  intensely  enjoyed  the  quest 
after  scientific  truth  that  he  declared  if  he  were  offered 
on  the  one  hand  the  possession  of  all  truth  and  on  the 
other  the  pleasure  of  seeking  after  it — he  should  choose 
the  latter. 

The  Three  Divine  Minds,  then,  being  All-knowing — 
that  is,  given  any  "  cause "  or  combination  whatsoever 
They  at  once  grasp  all  its  "  effects  "  or  potentialities  to 
the  remotest  perspective  of  eternity — to  Them  there  could 
never  come  this  thrill  of  rapt  delight  in  something  novel 

*  Matthew  28,  36. — "  Twentieth  Century  Testament^'  translation. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  7 

and  unknown  before,  were  it  not  that  by  bringing  Each 
their  personal  and  original  concepts  from  the  unknown 
depths  and  powers  of  their  several  Infinite  Natures,  to 
all  their  joy  in  Each  Other  They  add  this  perpetual  god- 
like joy  of  discovery — of  vision  ever  new  and  unfolding 
from  One  to  Another — and  which,  since  every  thought  of 
a  perfect  being  must  itself  be  perfect,  is  to  be  welcomed 
for  its  beauty  and  its  power,  and  is  at  once  to  enlist  for 
its  success  the  infinite  co-operation  of  the  Other  Two. 

Now  this  Divine  Eternal  Trinity,  with  its  three-fold 
infinite  energy,  must  create,  must  exert  this  energy,  or  its 
bliss  cannot  be  complete.  If  the  artist  who  does  not  paint, 
the  poet  who  does  not  write,  the  inventor  who  does  not 
contrive,  the  athlete  who  does  not  move,  be  each  to  that 
extent  balked,  abortive  and  therefore  suffering,  much  more 
the  Supreme  Artificers  of  the  universe,  if  that  universe 
be  never  to  emerge  from  the  domain  of  Thought  or  the 
Ideal  into  that  of  Fact  or  the  Real.  The  Genius  and  the 
Force  which  can  plan  and  bring  forth  and  sustain  a 
Universe  of  Stars  and  people  it  with  a  Universe  of  Souls 
must  actualize  this  infinite  conception  or  endure  torment 
infinite  of  repression  and  inaction,  and  therefore — 
.  In  the  beginning  of  the  universe  God  the  Father  created 
the  heavens  and  the  earth; 

And  the  earth  was  without  form  and  void,  and  darkness 
was  upon  the  face  of  the  deep. 

And  God  the  Mother  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters. 

For  She  is  "  Wisdom  "  and  concerning  Herself  She  de- 
clared— 

"  I  Wisdom  dwell  zvith  prudence  and  find  out  knowledge 
of  witty  inventions. 

"Counsel  is  mine  and  sound  wisdom;  I  am  understand- 
ing; I  have  strength. 


8  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

'^Jehovah  set  Me  up  in  the  beginning  of  his  way — be- 
fore his  works  of  old. 

"From  forever  was  I  knit  together,  from  the  begin- 
ning, or  ever  the  earth  was. 

"In  no  depths  was  I  begun — in  no  fountains  abundant 
in  waters. 

"Before  the  mountains  were  settled,  before  the  hills, 
had  I  beginning. 

"  While  as  yet  He  had  not  made  the  earth,  nor  the  fields, 
nor  the  highest  part  of  the  dust  of  the  world. 

"  When  He  prepared  the  heavens  I  was  there;  when 
He  set  a  compass  upon  the  face  of  the  depth. 

"  When  He  established  the  clouds  above — when  He 
strengthened  the  fountains  of  the  deep. 

"  When  He  gave  to  the  sea  his  decree  that  the  waters 
should  not  pass  his  commandment — when  He  appointed 
the  foundations  of  the  earth. 

"  Then  was  I  by  Him  the  Builder  as  One  brought  up 
with  Him,  and  I  was  daily  his  Delight,  smiling  before  Him 
in  all  time. 

"Smiling  in  the  habitable  part  of  his  earth,  and  my 
delights  were  with  the  sons  of  men."  * 

And  also — 

In  the  beginning  of  the  universe  was  the  Word,  and 
the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God  the  Son. 

All  things  were  made  by  Him,  and  without  Him  was  not 
anything  made  that  was  made. 

In  Him  was  Life,  and  the  Life  was  the  Light  of  men. 

And  God  the  Son  said — "Let  there  be  light,"  and  there 
was  light. 

The  counselling  and  co-working  of  the  Divine  Father 

*See  the  literal  translation  from  the  Hebrew  by  the  deceased 
Hebraist,  Miss  lulia  E.  Smith,  of  Glastonbury,  Conn.  Printed 
1876. 


r 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  9 

and  Mother  of  the  universe  are  therefore  openly  shown 
forth  as  above  in  the  first  verses  of  Genesis  and  in  the 
eighth  chapter  of  Proverbs — the  latter  the  most  sublime 
apotheosis  of  ideal  marriage  as  yet  embodied  in  human 
language — while  in  the  third  verse  of  Genesis  and  equally 
in  the  first  verses  of  St.  John's  Gospel,  God  the  Son — the 
Logos — the  Word — speaks  into  objective  existence  His 
fiHal  share  in  the  illimitable  design — "  for  without  Him 
was  not  anything  made  that  was  made." 

"  Stars  in  the  universe  around  Him  gleaming, 
Stars  in  the  firmament  alive  and  free, 
Stars,  and  of  stars  the  innumerable  streaming, 
Deeps  within  deeps,  a  river  in  the  sea." 

Not  irreverently  may  we  suppose  that  the  Universe  of 
Stars  was  first  created,  and  that  when  completed  the 
Triune  Deity  listened  with  delight  to  the  divine  infinite 
symphony  which  arose  from  that  balanced  intricacy  of  sun 
and  planet,  each  held  immutable  in  his  own  place  by  what 
Jonathan  Edwards  sublimely  called  "  the  stable  will  of 
God  " — of  that  "  Father  of  lights  with  Whom  is  no  varia- 
bleness neither  shadow  of  turning:  " 

"  There's  not  the  smallest  orb  that  thou  beholds't 
But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings. 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-eyed  cherubins," 

— and  yet  this  supernal  melody  was  monotonous  and  its 
harmony  simple  compared  with  what  it  would  be  when  the 
Universe  of  Stars  should  be  peopled  by  the  as  yet  un- 
created Universe  of  Souls — of  angels  and  archangels,  of 
cherubim  and  seraphim,  of  princes,  powers,  potentates 
and  spirits — who,  each  a  conscious  Soul  and  Will,  should 
voice  each  from  its  own  heart  its  own  joy  of  living  and 
loving  in  the  symphony  that  would  ascend  in  iridescence 
of  endless  beauty  as  the  created  expression  of-  the  Bliss 
Uncreate  of  the  IneiYable  and  Infinite  Eternal  Trinity. 


CHAPTER   II. 


SOUL. 


But  ah,  here  was  the  dilemma — here,  perhaps,  the  pause 
upon  the  brink  of  the  crowning  creation;  for  a  Universe 
of  Souls  would  and  must  be  a  Universe  of  free,  self-deter- 
mining Wills,  not  coercible  or  controllable  even  by  Om- 
nipotence, and  as  able,  therefore,  to  strike  each  one  a 
discord  in  the  divine  eternal  symphony  as  to  contribute 
an  added  concord. 

Soul  is  not  like  insect  or  animal — of  which  the  desires 
and  the  activities  are  limited  to  its  own  preservation  and 
that  of  its  species.  The  horizon  of  Soul  is  immeasurably 
vaster  than  itself.  Its  goal  is  ever  beyond  it.  A  spark 
struck  out  from  Deity,  its  aim,  like  that  of  Deity,  is  happi- 
ness, and  it  possesses  memory,  imagination  and  the  power 
of  reasoning  from  effect  to  cause  precisely  in  order  that, 
again  like  Deity,  it  may  freely  choose  and  pursue  its  own 
happiness  in  its  own  way.  Deity  may  instruct  it  in  the  way 
of  happiness,  but  Deity  may  not  force  it;  otherwise  it 
would  not  be  Soul,  but  animal,  or  plant,  or  star.  In  its 
very  essence  Soul  is  and  must  be  free. 

The  ideal  of  Deity  for  a  Universe  of  Souls  must  there- 
fore be  that  each  member  of  it  shall  govern  itself  from 
within — be,  like  Deity,  self-governed — and  shall  freely,  of 
its  own  will,  choose  the  Law  of  Giving  Everything,  or 
Law  of  Love,  even  as  Deity  chooses  it, — because  it  is  the 
only  law  which  ensures  that  receiving  everything  which  is 


I 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  II 

the  condition  of  absolute  and  infinite  happiness.  Not  be- 
cause Deity  is  a  Lonely  Despot  who  will  have  his  own 
arbitrary  way,  but  because,  knowing  all  laws  and  all  pos- 
sibilities, and  having  chosen  this  law  as  the  law  of  Their 
Own  Being,  Triune  Deity  desires  every  individual  soul 
for  its  own  sake  also  to  choose  it,  since  no  creature  can 
rise  above  its  creator,  but  must  be  as  its  creator  if  it 
would  share  the  bliss  of  that  creator.  Every  realm  of  the 
material  universe,  to  its  minutest  atom  and  ion,  is  obe- 
dient to  the  law  of  its  material  being: 

**  Their's  not  to  make  reply, 
Their's  not  to  question  why, 
Their's  but  to  do  or  die  "— 

But  would  a  spiritual  universe — a  Universe  of  Souls — 
remain  as  universally  and  unalterably  true  to  its  Law  of 
Life,  namely,  the  Law  of  Love  ? 

It  would  not,  because  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest, 
no  life,  not  even  the  Infinite  Life  of  Deity,  can  create 
life  upon  its  own  plane.  The  bee  creates  the  honeycomb; 
it  can  not  create  but  can  only  transmit  the  bee;  man 
creates  a  city,  a  steam  engine,  an  automaton;  he  can  not 
create,  he  can  only  transmit  a  man ;  Deity  creates  a  con- 
stellation, an  archangel — nay,  a  universe  of  both ;  but 
Deity  can  not  create  another  Deity ;  Deity  can  only  trans- 
mit Deity  as  the  Eternal  Father  and  Mother  did  transmit 
Deity  to  One  Eternal  Son  (and  for  aught  we  know  may 
have  transmitted  Deity  to  One  Eternal  Daughter).  The 
mind  of  Creative  Deity  is  incapable  of  error  because  it  is 
perfect  and  infinite;  but  the  Creator  can  not  endow  any 
"  creature "  with  such  a  mind.  The  created  mind,  no 
matter  how  exalted,  must  be  a  priori  liable  to  partiality, 
to  prejudice,  to  misconception,  to  mistake ! 


V 

12  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Divine  Omnipotence  foreknew,  therefore,  that  in  the 
lapse  of  ages  the  very  first  and  highest  of  created  in- 
telligences, namely,  the  "  Light-bearer "  Lucifer,  him 
of  the  matchless  intellect,  the  most  dazzHng  gifts  and 
the  most  god-like  powers — because  he  personally  had 
neither  witnessed  the  creation  of  the  universe  nor  was 
conscious  of  his  own  creation,  would  one  day  doubt — both 
from  the  vastness  of  that  universe  and  his  own  control  of 
its  mighty  forces  as  studied  and  mastered  by  his  mightier 
mind — whether  there  had  indeed  been  any  "  creation  "  by 
a  "  self-existing  "  Deity — whether  he,  too,  were  not  self- 
existent  and  therefore  by  right  a  participant  in  the  rule 
and  the  prestige  of  the  Supreme  Trinity;  or,  if  he,  Luci- 
fer, were  only  created,  whether,  perhaps,  They  also  were 
only  by  some  Prior  Deity  created,  and  thus  practically 
but  on  the  same  plane  of  being  with  himself. 

This  revolutionary  thought  once  lodged  in  the  heart  of 
Lucifer,  he  would  pursue  it  to  the  bitter  end.  It  would 
be  imparted  to  others,  would  be  welcomed  by  them,  and 
the  doubt  would  spread  until  "  the  third  part "  of  the 
Universe  of  Souls  would  be  drawn  after  it.* 

And  yet,  notwithstanding  this  appalling  fore-knowledge, 
in  divine  self-fulfilment  Triune  Omnipotence  swept  on- 
ward and  called  into  existence  its  high  Universe  of 
Free  Spirits. 

To  refrain  from  doing  so  because  some  of  them  were 
certain  eventually  to  rebel,  would  be  to  limit  Creative  Om- 
nipotence on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  to  lose  the 
infinite  joy  of  endless  loving  and  being  loved  by  radiant 
beings,  each  of  them  a  separate  thought  of  the  Creative 
Mind  and  to  be  fulfilled  each  in  ever-changing  and  ex- 
panding perfection,  as  the  plant  begins  in  the  perfect  seed, 

*  So  indicated  in  Revelation,   12,   4. 


NEfV    YORK-;    A    SYMPHONJC^  STUDY,  1 3 

goes  on  to  the  perfect  leaf,  then  to  the  perfect  flower,  and 
after  to  the  perfect  fruit.  When  the  revolt  should  really 
occur,  the  angelic  schism  be  really  consummated,  the 
Divine  Eternal  Three  knew  what  They  would  do.  They 
would  descend  with  their  fallen  creation  into  its  abysses, 
would  therein  live  and  suffer  with  it,  and  would  eternally 
proffer  it  of  their  own  Light  and  Life  and  Strength  until 
that  lost  creation  to  its  very  last  soul  should  be  lifted  out 
and  up — reconciled — redeemed — restored — and  re-estab- 
lished. 


CHAPTER   III. 

LUCIFER. 

For  long  ages  after  the  adding  to  the  Universe  of  Stars 
the  Universe  of  Souls  there  was  no  clashing  of  the  finite 
with  the  Infinite.  No  imperfection,  no  weakness,  no  dis- 
ease, no  suffering,  no  ugliness,  no  slavery,  no  death — was 
anywhere  throughout  those  measureless  realms.  Neither 
was  there  fear  of  any  one  or  of  any  thing.  There  was 
nothing,  nothing  whatsoever,  save  strength  and  freedom 
and  beauty,  save  life  and  love  and  joy,  save  progress  and 
development  and  triumph,  all  existent  by  and  in  the  Life 
and  the  Love  and  the  Bliss  of  the  Triune  Creator. 

Not  until  the  dawning  of  the  first  doubt  in  the  mind  of 
Lucifer  began  the  first  faint  discord  which  from  thence- 
forward slowly  but  surely  spread  and  swelled  and  aug- 
mented until  the  listening  ear  of  Deity,  instead  of  being 
endlessly  ravished  by  divine  ineffable  harmonies,  became 
ceaselessly  tortured  by  a  mad  infernal  dissonance  which 
pierced  also  the  yearning  heart  and  wrung  the  inmost 
soul  of  Deity,  because  each  tone  of  that  discord  revealed 
the  pain  which  began  for  the  revolting  children  of  Deity 
from  the  moment  that  they  exchanged  the  Law  of  Love — 
of  giving  everything — which  is  the  Law  of  God  and  of 
Life,  for  the  Law  of  Self — of  taking  everything — which 
is  the  Law  of  Lucifer  and  of  Death. 

Lucifer's  own  strength  and  splendor  as  the  elected 
leader  of  the  celestial  hierarchy,  together  with  the  sublime 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  IS 

achievements  in  every  realm  of  thought  and  endeavor 
which  had  brought  about  the  distinction,  had  ended  by 
bhnding  him  to  the  infinitely  greater,  though  softer, 
splendor  and  strength  of  his  Triune  Creator. 

Hardly  had  this  transcendent  intelligence  beheld  the 
starry  universe,  than  he  began  and  thereafter  continued  a 
survey  of  all  its  worlds  and  their  contents  until  a  luminous 
and  inexhaustible  knowledge  not  only  crowned  him  with 
the  beautiful  name  he  bore,  but  gave  him  also  a  dynamic 
and  constructive  power  scarcely  less  than  god-like. 

If  on  our  own  little  planet  "  Art  is  man  added  to  na- 
ture," how  much  more  in  the  measureless  universe  must 
Art  be  angel  added  to  creation ! 

At  first  simply  enjoying  his  own  unapproachable  tri- 
umphs and  the  rapturous  plaudits  that  welcomed  them, 
gradually  the  axis  of  Lucifer's  will  changed  from  the 
"  Thou  "  to  the  "  I."  He  became  possessed  of  the 
thought  that  in  his  progression  of  discovery  and  mastery 
he  must  one  day  reach  and  grasp  the  life-centre  or 
Causation  of  Things  and  thus  himself  become  a  creator 
— a  God — One  of  the  Supreme. 

But  this  goal  continually  receding  before  him,  his 
egotism  finally  wove  for  him  another  scheme  which  often 
boldly  expressed  itself  to  his  fellows :  "  \i  the  Heaven- 
Father  be  indeed  the  omnipotent  Creator  of  the  universe," 
so  would  he  argue,  "  why  will  He  not  call  into  being  one 
star  or  angel  the  more^  before  our  eyes,  and  thus  con- 
vince us  beyond  peradventure  that  He  really  is  our 
Maker  and  his  tiresome  '  law  of  love '  truly,  as  He  main- 
tains, the  law  of  our  existence?  But  though  I  begged 
this  of  Him  He  replied,  '  When  this  universe  has  fulfilled 
its  mission.  We  will  show  you  a  new  creation;  but  now 
We  are  resting  from   physical   creating  until   the   soul- 


1 6  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

universe  of  which  you,  Lucifer,  are  yourself  a  part,  shall 
have  perfectly  evolved  according  to  its  nature/  Now, 
let  me  ask,  what  is  this  but  excuse — but  evasion?  Can 
we  believe  that  a  *  creator '  of  omnipotent  power  would 
refuse  a  small  display  of  that  power  which  would  satisfy 
one  of  his  questioning  creatures  that  He  really  possessed 
it  ?  Does  this  reply  show  conscious  omnipotence  or  rather 
a  well-grounded  fear  lest  haply  our  angelic  fellowship 
should  unite  against  Pretenders  Who  are  uui  i  hree  while 
we  are  legion?  How  convenient  for  Them,  also,  noble 
friends,  is  this  '  law  of  love '  which  They  maintain  is 
the  condition  of  our  happiness,  nay,  of  our  very  life — 
keeping  us  all,  as  it  does,  in  a  perpetual  subordination  of 
admiration  and  adoration  toward  Themselves !  For  my- 
self, frankly,  until  I  have  thrown  off  this  belittling  yoke 
and  thus  feel  myself  absolutely  my  own  master,  free  to 
do  as  I  please  and  under  obligation  to  no  one — I  shall 
never  know  peace  of  mind,  and  I  should  think  every  self- 
respecting  spirit  of  us  all  would  feel  the  same." 

Thus  Lucifer,  in  the  cloud-palaces  of  his  dreams  long 
upborne  toward  the  Godhead,  had  at  last  attained  that 
highest  pinnacle  of  Selfhood — inability  to  recognise  a 
superior!  Ambition  had  first  scorched  and  shrivelled 
up  his  heart,  and  then  its  echoing  spirit — Ingratitude — • 
laid  its  freezing  spell  upon  his  soul.  Love  had  become 
impossible  to  him.  If  he  felt  any  response  toward  any  in 
the  universe,  it  was  but  a  haughty  condescension  toward 
the  spirits  lesser  than  himself  who  fed  him  with  flattery 
and  adulation.  Any  personality  near  or  equal  to  his  own 
was  intolerable  to  him.  Like  his  truest  human  child. 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  he  yearned,  he  burned,  for  un- 
limited domination — for  absolute  freedom  to  do  as  he 
would.    The  law  of  giving  everything  in  order  to  receive 


NEW    YORK':    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  17 

everything  was  abhorrent  to  him.  Rather  would  he 
take  everything  and  give  nothing.  Force,  its  possession 
and  its  expression,  was  to  him  the  only  good.  His  vast 
conscious  powers  demanded  the  Unlimited  for  their  exer- 
cise. To  accomplish,  to  achieve  an  event — not  from  any 
beneficent  reason,  but  simply  as  an  assertion  of  personal 
strength,  of  personal  will  and  because  he  personally  chose 
to  have  it  so — this  was  now  his  mainspring  of  conduct — 
his  one  fierce  joy.  He  was  the  pioneer  and  father  of  that 
still  lengthening  succession  of  spirits  which  realize  and 
express  only  Masculinism — or  the  Male  Soul  with  its  origi- 
nal Divine  Manhood  driven  out.  In  the  benign  and  bound- 
less universe  of  God  Lucifer  had  evolved  an  entirely  new 
type,  and  instead  of  the  "  Light-bearer  "  had  now  become 
"  Satan  " — the  Adversary — the  Hinderer — him  who  dark- 
ens and  blocks  and  obstructs,  and  who  labors  incessantly 
for  the  failure  and  the  destruction  of  the  Ideal ! 

In  the  launching  of  their  disaffection  Lucifer  and  his 
following  did  nothing  but  theorize  and  discuss.  The 
order  of  creation  continued  in  all  respects  as  before.  The 
Thrones  of  Living  Light  to  which  Lucifer  aspired  re- 
mained seemingly  unmoved.  Though  dissuading  and 
warning  Lucifer  when  he  sought  to  argue  with  Them, 
Triune  Deity  did  not  oppose  nor  restrain  him.  As  in 
the  old-time  myth  Phaeton  demanded  to  drive  the  Horses 
of  the  Sun,  and  his  father,  Phoebus  Apollo,  permitted  the 
fatal  attempt,  so  did  the  Omnipotent  Three  leave  free 
scope  to  their  malcontent  to  scale  their  infinite  skies  if 
he  could.  The  heavenly  hosts  became  agitated  through 
all  their  ranks,  but  no  notice  was  taken  by  the  Thrones 
and  none  was  called  to  account.  The  insensate  archangel 
— in  his  own  person  the  type  and  the  forerunner  of  the 
"  fool  that  saith  in  his  heart  '  There  is  no  God  '  " — even 


1 8  NEH^   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

doubted  within  himself  whether  the  Divine  Trinity  were 
aware  of  what  was  going  on. 

One-third  of  his  fellow-angels  had  pledged  him  their 
sympathy  and  co-operation,  but  here  his  conversions 
stopped.  He  persuaded  himself  that  many  more  were  se- 
cretly with  him  and  that  if  an  open  blow  were  struck  these 
would  at  once  join  his  revolted  banner.  His  project  was 
nothing  less  than  to  attack  the  Supreme  Thrones  and  seat 
himself  either  beside  or  above  the  Supreme  Three. 

The  possibility  of  failure,  of  defeat,  never  entered  his 
mind.  As  yet  no  member  of  the  angelic  host  had  ever 
failed  in  anything.  Success  had  hitherto  been  the  unvary- 
ing law  of  the  universe  and  success  would  of  course  crown 
this  undertaking  as  it  had  every  other.  Lucifer  declared 
to  his  following — as  he  did  to  himself — that  he  wanted 
but  "  justice  " — but  his  "  right "  as  the  Chief  of  the  Hosts 
of  God  to  place  and  prestige  equalling  the  place  and  the 
prestige  of  the  so-called  "  Eternal  Son."  True  that  from 
the  beginning  of  his  existence  the  Supreme  Father  and 
Mother  had  taught  him,  together  with  all  other  souls — ^that 
he  was  but  of  the  created,  while  the  Only  Son  being  "  be- 
gotten, not  made  "  was  a  Creator — that  he,  Lucifer,  was 
finite,  while  the  Only  Son  was  Infinite.  He  did  not  believe 
it.  They  but  said  so  in  order  to  uphold  their  Favorite 
against  all  other  archangels,  himself  especially. 

And  so  at  length  the  storm  of  rebellion  which  had  been 
gathering  so  long  in  thought  broke  forth  into  deed,  and, 
as  we  learn  from  the  Book  of  Revelation,  "  There  was  war 
in  heaven.  Michael  and  his  angels  fought  against  the 
dragon;  and  the  dragon  fought  and  his  angels  and  pre- 
vailed not,  neither  was  their  place  found  any  more  in 
heaven.  And  the  great  dragon  was  cast  out,  that  old 
serpent  called  the  Peyil  md  SQtQn^  which  deceiveth  the 


I 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  19 

whole  world;  he  was  cast  out  into  the  earth  and  his  angels 
were  cast  out  with  him." 

In  this  war  the  Triune  Deity  had  taken  no  part. 

For  the  Creator  to  fight  against  the  created  would 
have  been  the  flame  against  the  moth  indeed.  Nor  was 
there  need  that  Deity  should  do  so.  The  Universe  of 
Souls  was  a  vast  Self-governing  Autonomy.  One  law 
had  been  given  it — the  Law  of  Love.  If  each  would  give 
everything,  each  must  inevitably  receive  everything,  and 
deprivation  and  sorrow  be  therefore  impossible.  But  to 
the  Souls  themselves  was  left  the  organization  and  de- 
velopment of  their  happiness,  and  doubtless  it  was  the 
very  crown  of  the  creative  joy  and  triumph  of  Creative 
Deity  that,  from  their  own  perfect  harmony  within  them- 
selves and  according  to  their  various  gifts  and  powers, 
the  Souls — the  Universe  of  Souls — should  practically  have 
become  that  "  Celestial  Rose  "  which,  as  sung  by  the  in- 
spired Dante,  forever  glows  and  palpitates  around  The 
Divine  Thrones  and  whose  harmonies  and  whose  per- 
fumes forever  radiate  to  the  farthest  boundaries  of  the 
Universe  of  Stars. 

Therefore  it  came  to  pass  that  when  Lucifer  and  his 
hosts  opened  their  audacious  attack  against  the  Highest, 
the  loyal  angels  flew  to  the  defence  of  the  Life  and  Light 
and  Sweetness  they  so  absolutely  adored.  Uninfluenced 
by  the  subtle  and  specious  leader,  they  had  long  discerned 
the  fell  abysses  of  his  ambition,  and  their  love  had  re- 
doubled for  his  treachery.  Now,  by  his  own  act,  had  come 
the  hour  when  they  could  rightfully  expel  from  their 
councils  and  their  society  these  traitors  to  the  All-loving 
Ones,  and  not  one  moment  did  they  pause. 

Advancing  confidently  against  the  Divine  Heights,  Lu- 
cifer and  his  legions  found  themselves  opposed  by  myriads 


V 

20  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

on  myriads  of  flaming  spirits  who,  in  numbers  twice  as 
numerous  as  his  own,  and  each  animated  by  a  fearful  in- 
tensity of  resistance,  had  poured  in  from  every  quarter  of 
the  Universe  of  Stars.  Far  from  making  headway  toward 
his  impious  goal,  he  and  his  were  forced  back,  back,  and 
still  irresistibly  back,  until  "  like  lightning "  they  "  fell 
from  Heaven  "  and  their  places  therein  "  knew  them  no 
more."  From  thenceforward  the  Universe  of  Souls  was 
openly  divided  between  the  Friends  and  the  Foes  of  its 
Creator. 

The  thought  will  next  arise,  "  Why  did  not  the  Supreme 
Trinity  at  once  withdraw  from  the  rebelling  angels  the  life 
which  had  been  given  them — annihilate  them — and  leave 
only  the  loving  and  loyal  spirits  to  go  on  from  glory  to 
glory  to  all  eternity  ?  " 

Why?  Because  this  would  be  for  Omnipotence  to  fail 
in  a  portion  of  its  design,  and  also  to  doom  Creative 
Deity  to  endless  sorrow  over  all  those  destroyed  exist- 
ences which  were  to  have  been  so  triumphant.  The  love 
and  yearning  of  the  Divine  Eternal  Trinity  over  tho  souls 
They  have  created — from  Lucifer  down  to  the  least — is  in- 
finite, fathomless,  and  not  to  be  appeased  save  by  the 
answering  love  and  consequent  ideal  joy  of  each  and 
every  one  of  them.  The  inmost  heart  of  the  Divine  Father 
and  Son  must  and  would  forever  bleed — the  secret  tears 
of  the  Divine  Mother  must  and  would  forever  fall — over 
those  forever  missing  but  never-to-be-forgotten  ones. 

From  its  very  name,  "  Omnipotence  "  must  not  even- 
tually fail.  In  the  end  "  Omnipotence  "  must  succeed,  and 
therefore — because  the  finite  intelligence  of  finite  mind 
can  learn  only  through  obedience  to  a  Higher  Power  in 
Which  it  has  absolute  faith,  or  else  through  experience 
gained   in   its   own  groping  and  trying  and   suffering — 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  21 

Omnipotence  must  hold  these  wayward  souls  in  being  as 
the  towering  tree  holds  up  a  withered  branch,  patiently 
waiting  meantime  through  the  tragic  ages  until  they  shall 
learn  each  by  individual  experience  what  does  and  must 
result  to  the  soul  which  opposes  itself  to  that  Law  of 
Love  which  is  the  Life-Law  of  the  Eternal  Trinity,  and, 
convinced  at  last  by  the  ever-deepening  pain,  failure  and 
deterioration  resulting  from  their  wilfulness,  shall  one  by 
one  resolve,  "  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  Father,  and  will 
say  unto  Him,  '  Father,  I  have  sinned  against  that  Happi- 
ness of  the  Universe  which  is  "  Heaven  "  and  before  Thee. 
Forgive  my  blindness  and  my  self-sufficiency.  Teach  me 
to  know  Thee  as  Thou  art  and  to  love  as  Thou  Thyself 
dost  love,  and  may  the  stream  of  thy  Son's  Eternal  Life 
riow  through  my  perishing  spirit  until  it  is  revived  and 
restored  to  Thee;  for  Thou,  with  the  Mother  and  Only 
Son,  Alone  art  Life,  and  Thou,  w^th  Them,  Alone  art 
Heaven.'  " 

The  infinite  suffering,  the  measureless  agony  that  this 
waiting — that  this  toleration  of  evil — meant  for  The  Triune 
Deity,  who  but  Deity  can  comprehend  or  conceive  ? 

For  whatever  IS — whether  it  be  Heaven  or  whether  it 
be  Hell — whether  the  ravishing  perfection  of  beauty  or 
the  revolting  extreme  of  ugliness — whether  the  whitest 
white  of  good  or  the  foulest  foul  of  evil — must  be  forever 
in  the  consciousness  of  Deity,  since  Deity  is  the  all- 
pervading,  circum-sphering  Life  outside  of  Which  nothing 
can  exist.  No  life,  not  even  the  life  that  is  opposing  Deity, 
can  live  apart  from  Deity.  With  the  raging  pride  of  Lu- 
cifer's revolt,  with  the  writhing  pangs  of  his  foiled  am- 
bition, with  the  blackest  depth  of  his  depravity,  the  Divine 
Trinity  of  Life  and  Love  does  and  must  perpetually  abide 
even  as  It  abides  with  the  mounting  purity  and  joy  of  the 
highest  seraph. 


V 

22  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Surely  this  is  the  most  awful  consequence  of  what  we 
call  "  sin  " — of  this  Law  of  Self  which  is  soul-suicide  or 
"  death  " — that  not  only  the  sinning  one  does  and  must 
personally  suffer,  but  also  that  this  Sweet  and  Omnipotent 
God,  this  Author  of  Life  and  Strength,  this  Source  of 
Beauty  and  Joy,  must,  "  though  without  sin,"  sin  with  the 
sinner's  sin,  must  suffer  with  the  sinner's  suffering,  must 
echo  every  pang  experienced  throughout  the  universe, 
whether  it  be  the  fall  of  a  sparrow,  of  a  Napoleon,  or 
of  a  Lucifer — must  bear  in  the  Divine  Consciousness  and 
supply  the  life  for  all  the  impurity  and  shame,  all  the  hate 
and  cruelty,  all  the  pain  and  agony,  all  the  discord  and 
disorder,  all  the  filth  and  uncleanness,  all  the  squalor  and 
disease,  all  the  ugliness  and  deformity  which  throughout 
the  miserable  domains  of  Satan — whether  in  this  our 
world  or  in  some  other — perpetually  profane  and  blas- 
pheme and  contradict  the  Divine  Ideals  ! 

Imagine  a  master-leader  facing  a  magnificent  orchestra 
with  the  most  sublime  and  beautiful  of  musical  composi- 
tions on  their  desks  before  them  and  in  their  hands  the 
most  splendid  instruments  for  its  performance,  and  as  his 
baton  gives  the  beat,  instead  of  the  intended  wave  of  rav- 
ishing harmony,  one-third  of  the  artists  deliberately  play 
anything,  everything,  rather  than  the  notes  before  them — 
nay,  they  even  go  on  to  reject  their  exquisite  instruments 
and  blow  horns,  beat  gongs  and  base  utensils,  fire  ex- 
plosives and  utter  hoarse  laughter  and  cries  in  order  to 
make  a  din  infernal  enough  to  drown  out,  if  possible,  the 
strains  of  ihe  other  two-thirds  of  their  fellow-players — 
imagine  this,  and  likewise  imagine  that  leader  keeping 
steadily  on,  enduring  from  age  to  age  the  musical  agony 
until  the  rebellious  players,  one  by  one,  shall  repent  and 
take  up  each  his  appointed  instrument,  and,  with  all  his 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  'i'S 

soul  and  all  his  mind  and  all  his  heart  and  all  his  strength, 
play  upon  it  his  allotted  part;  this — such — in  a  dim,  inade- 
quate figure — is  the  Spiritual  Symphony  of  the  Universe — 
of  the  Universe  of  Souls — of  vi^hich  you,  Reader,  and  I 
are  each  a  concordant  or  a  discordant  unit ! 


CHAPTER   IV. 

HELL. 

To  Lucifer  the  inconceivable  had  happened.  A  new 
horizon — the  horizon  of  pain,  of  despair — had  swum  into 
his  mental  ken.  Hitherto  he  had  known  success  only,  for 
success  is  a  condition  of  Heaven,  and  he  had  been  a  life- 
long denizen  of  Heaven.  Now  he  knew  failure,  and  fail- 
ure— that  gulf — that  abyss — because  of  its  never-dying 
worm  of  self-reproach,  is  hell.  As  a  new  realm  of  the  uni- 
verse, Hell,  through  him,  had  begun.  This  measureless, 
this  incredible  woe,  was  all  that  his  revolt  had  accom- 
plished. 

How  did  his  mortified  and  tortured  spirit  account  for 
his  failure?  Simply  on  the  ground  that  he  had  been  out- 
numbered two  to  one.  Oh,  had  his  forces  but  equalled 
Michael's  forces !  He  had  been  continually  winning  ad- 
herents. H  he  had  but  waited,  eventually  his  numbers 
would  have  equalled,  might  even  have  surpassed,  the  num- 
bers of  those  blind  and  slavish  spirits  who  would  not  strike 
for  higher  glory  and  dominion,  but  were  contented  as  they 
were — and  then  victory  would  have  been  his. 

But  the  fallen  Lucifer  juggled  with  himself.  This 
"  father  of  lies  "  and  "  liar  from  the  beginning "  would 
not  face  the  truth — the  truth  being  that  every  spirit  which 
could  be  won  had  been  won,  and  that,  seeing  he  could  ex- 
pect nothing  more  by  argument  or  persuasion,  he  had  been 
driven  to  try  the  last  argument  of  kings  and  of  devils — 
force ! 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHOMC  STUDY.  25 

In  his  agony  did  yearning  and  pitying  Deity  seek  out 
Lucifer  to  "  reason  "  with  him  as  later  on  Deity  so  often 
reasoned  with  the  equally  wayward  children  of  Israel — 
and  did  Deity  say  to  him: 

"Lucifer,  you  suffer.    What  did  we  tell  you?" 

"  But  I  am  not  *  dead.'  You  said  I  should  die  if  I 
opposed  you  and  your  law." 

"  Suffering  is  death — is  the  beginning  and  the  process 
of  death.  Only  the  Creator  can  suffer  and  not  die.  If  the 
creature  suffer  and  cannot  conquer  his  suffering,  it  will 
end  by  conquering  him.  Sooner  or  later  he  will  surely  die 
— vanish  from  the  universe." 

"  I  shall  conquer  my  suffering." 

"How?" 

"If  you  are  in  fact  All-knowing,  you  know  already. 
If  you  are  not,  I  shall  keep  my  own  counsel." 

"  You  are  right,  Lucifer.  We  do  know,  and  we  know 
that  your  thoughts  are  chaos.  Therefore,  will  you  not 
change  your  mind  and  come  back?  Will  you  not  be 
reconciled?  Will  you  not  love  us  again  as  we  always 
have — as  we  always  shall — love  you  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  Now  you  have  tried  another  plan,  do  you  not  see  that 
in  a  universe  created  hy  Love  and  created  for  Love  every 
soul  in  it  must  love — must  give  everything — or  be  cast  out 
by  it  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  admit  that  the  universe  was  created  either 
hy  or  for  '  love  ' ;  nay — I  do  not  admit,  because  I  do  not 
personally  know,  that  the  universe  was  *  created '  at  all ; 
nor  am  I  out  of  the  universe." 

No,  because  we  are  yet  holding  you  in  it;  but  you 
and  your  following  are  out  of  Heaven,  that  is,  out  of  hap- 
piness, and  thus  are  on  the  road  to  death.   Having  grasped 


26  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

at  what  neither  was  nor  could  be  yours,  you  and  your 
following  are  in  torment,  the  torment  of  your  defeat,  loss 
and  despair.  Will  you  not  admit  that  you  were  wrong, 
that  we  were  right,  and  come  back  to  us  and  to  your 
own  glorious  place  and  heritage?  If  not  for  your  own 
sake,  will  you  not  for  the  sake  of  all  those  deluded  and 
deprived  of  their  happiness  through  you?  And  if  not  for 
theirs  will  you  not  for  ours — for  now  that  you  and  yours 
are  suffering,  We  who  are  your  Life  are  suffering  and 
must  suffer  with  you,  and  as  much  more  than  you  suffer 
as  Our  Infinite  is  beyond  your  finite?  " 

"If  you  are  suffering  because  I  do,  that  very  thought 
would  give  me  new  resolve.  I  hope  you  are  suffering  and 
that  you  suffer  all  that  we  are  suffering,  and  since  you 
suggest  it,  more  too.    But  that  is  too  good  to  be  true." 

"  It  is  true,"  answered  Deity ;  "  it  is  too  true." 

"  Take  us  back,  then,  into  Heaven  and  give  us  our 
realms  and  our  dignities  and  our  activities  and  our  joys 
as  before,  and  we  will  no  longer  suffer  and  neither  will 
you." 

"  As  we  told  you  from  the  beginning,  we  do  not  *  rule ' 
the  Universe  of  Souls.  For  the  Joy  of  Creating  we  called 
into  existence  the  Universe  of  Stars,  and  to  share  and 
complete  our  own  Joy  of  Living  we  peopled  it  with  the 
Universe  of  Souls,  giving  them  the  Law  of  that  Joy — 
the  Law  of  Love  which  made  us  blissful  and  keeps  us 
omnipotent,  then  leaving  them  freely  to  keep  it  or  not, 
as  they  chose.  Force — the  coercive  force  which  you, 
Lucifer,  so  worship — in  the  realm  of  spirit  is  paradoxical, 
impossible,  a  contradiction  in  terms  and  to  us  abhorrent. 
Omnipotence  would  not  compel  the  love  and  allegiance 
of  the  least  and  lowest  soul  in  the  entire  hierarchy.  En- 
forced love  would  not  and  could  not  be  the  true  love,  and 


NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  27 

we  want  and  will  accept  only  the  true  love.  It  is  the 
loving  angels,  therefore,  and  not  we,  who  have  cast  you 
out  of  Heaven.  You  intrigued  among  them;  you  slandered 
them;  as  far  as  you  could  you  seduced  them  with  your 
new  Law  of  Self;  finally,  you  made  war  upon  your  and 
their  Creator.  They  have  cast  you  out  in  order  to  re- 
establish the  peace  and  joy  they  had  with  us  from  their 
beginning,  and  which  is  their  birthright.  In  justice  to 
them  we  could  not  put  you  back  unless  you  acknowledge 
that  you  have  sinned  against  the  Happiness  of  Heaven — 
of  the  whole  Universe — and  turn  utterly  from  the  Law  of 
Self  back  to  the  Law  of  Love." 

"In  justice  to  them!"  echoed  Lucifer,  scornfully;  "in 
hatred  to  us,  you  mean.  You  do  not  now  love  any  of  us 
and  you  never  did  love  me,  or  you  would  not  have  pre- 
ferred Him  Whom  you  call  the  *  Only  Son '  ever  and  al- 
ways before  myself.  Now  you  would  fain  humble  us,  and 
myself  above  all,  before  the  whole  universe.  But  I  will 
not  please  you  in  this.  If  I  doubted  you  before,  now  I 
hate  and  abhor  you,  and  I  will  do  evjerything  in  my  power 
to  prevent  a  single  one  of  my  adherents  from  seeking 
reconciliation  with  you.  I  see  now  that  while  you  seemed 
to  be  passive  if  not  ignorant  regarding  our  discontent  and 
disaffection,  you  were  really  plotting  against  us.  You 
evidently  promised  to  others  that  everything  that  was  ours 
should  be  theirs,  and  so  you  kept  them  true.  '  Supreme  * 
Beings  though  you  claim  to  be,  they  love  you  no  better 
than  we  do ;  they  have  been  more  politic,  that's  all.  Con- 
fess that  I — that  we — were  *  wrong/  and  '  love  '  you  and 
them  once  more  ?  Never  !  War,  rather,  eternal  war — eter- 
nal revolt — against  them  and  against  you." 

Before  finally  leaving  the  defiant  demon  did  his  all- 
pitying  Creator  once  more  gently  reply  and  say — "  War 


28  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

be  it  then,  Lucifer,  but  henceforth  on  our  and  not  your 
personal  plane.  On  this  plane  we  will  provide  you  a 
realm  of  your  own  and  will  people  it  with  intelligent 
beings  whom  you  shall  freely  do  your  utmost  to  win  as 
your  adherents,  and  on  our  side  we  will  do  the  same. 
As  a  rule  these  new  beings  shall  see  or  perceive  neither 
you  nor  ourselves.  Their  only  guide  and  motive  shall  be 
the  principles  for  which  you  and  we  respectively  stand, 
and  to  save  you,  if  you  will,  from  a  second  inevitable  de- 
feat, here  and  now  we  warn  you  that  in  the  end  they  will 
reject  your  Principle  of  Self  and  adopt  our  Principle  of 
Love.  But  if  you  will  not  listen  to  us;  if  you  still  per- 
sist in  believing  that  you  understand  the  underlying  Life 
and  Law  of  the  Universe  better  than  we,  its  authors — 
which  is,  in  effect,  to  claim  that  you  are  a  Deity  superior 
to  Ourselves — then  we  wish  you  to  have  the  freest  and 
amplest  scope  for  testing  your  belief.  The  end  of  our 
existence  is  happiness.  That  also  is  your  end  and  aim 
as  it  must  be  that  of  every  self-conscious  intelligence  and 
will  be  that  of  the  riew  race  whom  we  are  to  place  in 
your  power.  Let  then  the  inexorable  logic  of  events,  of 
cause  and  effect,  that  which  the  new  race  will  one  day 
call  "  science,"  be  judge  between  us.  We  will  never  co- 
erce you.  When  you  finally  witness  the  results  of  our 
principle  upon  the  weak  and  groping  humanity-to-be  as 
contrasted  with  the  results  of  yours,  we  look  for  your  co- 
ercion of  yourself — for  your  voluntary  confession  and 
forsaking  of  your  Principle  of  Death  and  for  your  per- 
sonal prayer  to  us  for  restoration  to  that  Life  and  Love 
and  Heaven-Bliss  from  which  you  have  wilfully  cut  your- 
self off.  Until  that  time,  you,  the  universe  and  ourselves, 
two  of  whom  you  hate  and  one  of  whom  you  scorn,  must 
and  will  all  agonize  together — and  ourselves  infinitely 
more  than  all  the  rest!" 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  29 

The  Glory  and  the  Beauty  and  the  Sweetness  of  The 
Triune  Godhead — the  overwhelming  grandeurs  and  splen- 
dors of  their  illimitable  creation — the  infinite  tenderness 
of  .their  infinite  love — had  not  sufficed  to  keep  Lucifer 
true  to  Them  and  Heaven.  He,  too,  had  aspired  to  be  a 
creator,  and  Hell — "  an  awful  Hell " — existing  as  the 
deadly,  implacable  Foe  of  Heaven,  was  his  dreadful  re- 
sulting achievement.  If  he  and  his  fellow-rebels  were 
not  to  be  annihilated,  how  were  they  to  be  reconciled — to 
be  converted — and  thus  this  bottomless  abyss  be  filled,  this 
measureless  breach  be  closed,  this  intolerable  dissonance 
be  harmonized  ? 

"  *  Not  by  might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  My  Spirit/  saith 
the  Lord  of  Hosts  " — that  is,  by  the  Divine  Eternal  Fem- 
inine, Who,  in  infinite  contrast  to  the  Father  and  the  Son, 
wields  not  the  coercive  forces  of  the  universe  and  is 
"  Omnipotent "  only  because  the  All-wisdom  of  her  Coun- 
sel, the  All-perfections  of  her  Nature  and  the  All-grace 
of  her  Attributes  render  Her  Irresistible. 

To  Lucifer,  with  his  concentrated  masculinism,  this 
Supernal  but  Intangible  Being  had  ever  been  an  enigma. 
The  Creator,  comprehending  everything,  never  despises 
anything;  but  the  instinct  of  the  "creature"  always  and 
everywhere  is  to  scorn  and  oppose  what  is  unlike  itself. 
Thus  Lucifer,  by  far  the  highest  and  greatest  but  also  the 
most  self-asserting  and  grasping  personality  of  the  created 
universe — was  utterly  blind  to  the  claims  and  perfections 
of  that  One  of  the  Triune  Deity  most  absolutely  dif- 
fering from  himself. 

The  open  strength  and  glory  of  the  Father  and  the  Son 
as  the  Overlords  of  all  the  angelic  hosts,  he  could  meas- 
urably understand,  and  in  the  dream  of  his  importunate 
arrogance  dare  to  cope  with  and  hope  to  overcome.     But 


30  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

this  Elusive  Loveliness  within  a  half-concealing  veil  of 
light — this  hardly  more  than  Emanation  which  might  be 
Ultimate  Intellect,  or  Illimitable  Genius,  or  simply  "  the 
Nonentity  which  can  fathom  fathomless  love "  that,  the 
male  nature  ever  hungers  after  and  Masculinism  ever 
seizes  and  assimilates  with  itself  without  recognition 
or  reward,  but  which  Manhood  never  accepts  without 
giving  its  whole  self  in  return — this  "  Divine  Feminine  " 
might  be  any  one  of  these  or  all  three  combined  for  aught 
Lucifer  knew  or  wanted  to  know.  Sufficient  to  him  that 
She  was  not  an  Arbiter  of  Creation  in  the  sense  that 
he  himself  burned  to  become.  To  his  blind  arrogance 
She  was  but  its  Ornament,  nay,  if  you  will,  its  Radiance, 
but  not  its  Law-giver  or  its  Power; — and  yet  with  this 
mere  Persuasive  One  the  Father  and  the  Son  shared  the 
measureless  empire  and  prestige  that  were  withheld  from 
him,  the  tremendous,  all-comprehending,  executive  arch- 
angel !  Before  his  rebellion  he  believed  that  She  influenced 
Them  against  his  pretensions,  and  his  resentment  was  in 
proportion.  O  that  he  could  annihilate  Her — could  brush 
Her  out  of  his  way ! 

And  still  beneath  his  rage  was  a  haunting  terror  lest 
eventually  She  would  subdue  him,  and  deeper  even  than 
this  a  heart-break  and  a  torture  that  the  Loveliest  was  dis- 
approving him — that  She  did  not  take  the  same  view  of 
him  that  he  took  of  himself — She — whose  smile  was  once 
the  dearest  reward  of  every  achievement  in  the  universe ! 

Thus  the  intensest  note  of  the  dreadful  drama  of  THE 
REVOLT  OF  THE  CREATURE  AGAINST  THE 
CREATOR  was  the  special  hatred  of  Lucifer,  as  the 
Finite  Autocratic  Masculine,  against  the  Spirit,  or  In- 
finite Pleading  Feminine — and  therefore  it  was  that  the 
Divine  Father  and  the  Son,  in  the  councils  of  Eternity 


NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  31 

before  creation  was,  had  accepted  and  were  now  about 
to  carry  out  in  Time  the  Plan,  the  strange  plan — and 
to  bring  to  pass  the  Act,  the  strange  act,*  proposed  by 
this  Divine  Non-resisting  Spirit  for  turning  the  passing 
failure  of  the  Universe,  which  would  be  "Hell"  into  that 
everlasting  triumph  of  the  Universe  which  must  be 
"  Heaven." 

•Isaiah,  28:21. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE   GAME   OF   SOULS. 

Lucifer  had  adventured  against  Deity  with  battalions, 
but  battalions  are  not  on  the  Plane  of  Deity  and  he  had 
been  vanquished  not  by  Deity  but  by  fellow-angels  who 
were  the  devotees  of  Deity. 

Since,  however,  the  inevitable  challenge  of  the  Creator 
by  the  Created  had  come — since  the  "  Why  ?  "  was  still 
boldly  demanded  of  Infinite  Spirit  by  Finite  Soul  and, 
in  spite  of  its  first  defeat,  submission  and  reconciliation 
were  scorned — All-loving  Deity  would  not  now  abandon, 
that  is,  annihilate  the  defiant  questioner,  but  would  lift 
him  to  its  own  Plane  of  First  Causes  and  there  provide 
him  with  an  arena  so  absolutely  his  that  "  with  none  to 
hinder  nor  any  to  make  him  afraid,"  but  on  equal  terms 
with  Deity,  he  could  freely  champion  and  inculcate  his 
limited  Principle  of  Self  or  the  "  I  "  as  against  the  limit- 
less Principle  of  Love  or  the  "  Thou,"  and  let  the  one 
making  for  the  greatest  happiness — otherwise  the  more 
beautiful — be  the  winner. 

For  though  Love  alone  is  the  Subjective  of  Happiness, 
the  Objective  or  Outward  Expression  of  Love  is  the  Beau- 
tiful; therefore  the  ultimate  tribunal  for  both  Creator  and 
Created  is  equally  and  eternally  the  Beautiful. 

To  this  end,  upon  the  most  exquisite  spot  of  a  planet 
which  through  long  ages  had  been  slowly  evolving  into 
a  world  of  mingled  loveliness  and  majesty,   two  newly 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  33 

created  spirits  were  established  with  "  dominion "  over 
everything  that  world  contained.  Differing  from  all  the 
other  intelligences  of  the  vast  surrounding  universe,  they 
were  clothed  in  a  dense  outer  veil  woven  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground  on  which  they  walked — a  veil  flawless  in  beauty 
and  perfection,  but  which  was  intended  to  hide  and  which 
did  hide  the  Triune  Deity  and  also  all  other  spirits  from 
their  vision. 

Like  Them  in  whose  ''  image  "  they  were  made,  they 
were  of  opposite  sex.  The  male  spirit  had  been  created 
first,  and  when  he  had  lived  long  enough  to  discover  that 
through  the  whole  range  of  the  animal  kingdom  there 
was  no  real  companion  for  him,  God  brought  unto  him  a 
sister. 

"  When  we  meet  our  accurate  mate,"  said  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  "  conversation  begins  and  life  is  delicious."  The 
beautiful  Eden  wherein  Adam  had  found  himself  suddenly 
became  a  rapturous  Paradise.  Every  day,  every  hour,  re- 
vealed to  the  enchanting  pair  something  more  lovely  and 
lovable  in  each  other  and  in  the  nature  around  them. 
Conscious  only  of  eye  answering  eye,  of  speech  answering 
speech,  of  soul  answering  soul,  they  walked  as  it  were  on 
air.  Their  gifts  and  their  graces  were  godlike ;  their  inno- 
cence was  like  snow;  but  they  were  absolutely  ignorant. 
They  had  everything  to  learn,  and  as  yet  one  only  warning 
had  been  vouchsafed  them  by  the  high  yet  gracious  Pres- 
ence that  shared  their  happiness  in  the  decline  of  every 
day:  "Of  the  tree  in  the  midst  of  the  Garden  ye  may  not 
eat,  lest  ye  die." 

They  did  not  know,  they  could  not  dream,  those  un- 
conscious lovers,  that  they  were  the  opening  though  self- 
moving  pawns  in  a  dread  game  of  Heaven  and  Hell  which 
a  whole  universe  was  to  watch,  nor  that  the  Divine  Eter- 


34  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

nal  Feminine  as  the  "  still  small  voice "  *  of  conscience 
was  to  be  their  perpetual  Pleader  against  Self,  while  Lu- 
cifer, her  fierce  implacable  foe,  was  to  be  their  sleepless 
Tempter  for  Self ! 

The  exquisite  Eve  had  been  brought  to  the  youth  Adam 
to  be  his  companion,  but  when  Satan  towered  before  her 
in  the  form  of  a  gorgeous,  gleaming,  undulating  serpent 
she  was  alone.  Together  the  pair  would  have  been  invul- 
nerable. Each  would  have  supplemented  the  other,  and 
therefore  the  arch-enemy  took  the  least  sturdy  and  per-, 
sistent,  the  most  imaginative  and  impressionable,  when 
sfte  had  no  one  to  confer  with,  and  appealed  to  her  on  two 
of  the  noblest  sides  of  our  human  nature — its  love  of 
knowledge  and  its  love  of  beauty,  and  also  on  perhaps  its 
weakest  one — its  delight  in  the  pleasure  of  tasting. 

"  Tell  me,"  said  her  strange  and  fascinating  visitor, 
"  has  God  said  that  you  shall  not  eat  of  every  tree  of  the 
garden  ?  " 

"  We  may  eat  of  the  fruit  of  all  the  trees  of  the  garden," 
replied  the  maiden,  "  except  the  tree  in  the  midst  thereof. 
Of  that  fruit  God  said  we  may  not  eat  of  it,  neither  may 
we  touch  it,  lest  we  die." 

"  Nay,  you  will  not  surely  die.  On  the  contrary,  God 
knows  that  as  soon  as  you  eat  of  that  fruit  your  eyes  will 
be  opened  and  you  will  become  like  Himself,  knowing  both 
good  and  evil.  God  does  not  want  you  to  be  as  wise  as  He 
is,  and  so  He  forbids  you  this  very  best  and  most  desirable 
of  all  the  fruits  of  the  garden." 

God  had  predicted  "  death  "  to  Lucifer  as  the  result  of 
his  rebellion,  yet  Lucifer  was  not  dead;  on  the  contrary,  he 
was  most  intensely  alive  and  eager.  God  had  now  also 
predicted  death  to  Adam  and  Eve  if  they  ate  of  this  paltry 

*  I  Kings,  19,  12. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  35 

fruit.  Lucifer  was  anxious  to  see  death.  As  yet  nothing 
that  he  could  perceive  had  gone  out  of  existence.  Was 
it  but  a  threat  which  this  Jealous  Trio — trying  to  rule  the 
universe  after  their  own  fashion — could  not  carry  out? 

The  melting,  alluring  beauty  of  the  forbidden  fruit 
which,  now  that  her  attention  was  bent  upon  it,  seemed  to 
compel  her  grasp,  completed  the  conquest  of  the  child-like 
Eve.  She  longed  to  enjoy  what  looked  so  fair,  and  she 
was  fired  with  the  thought  of  conversing  on  equal  terms 
with  the  August  One  who  daily  taught  herself  and  her 
beautiful  brother.  In  vain  the  Spirit,  her  Divine  Mother, 
whispering,  warned  her — "Do  not  touch;  do  not  eat."  Eve 
heard,  but  between  the  blushing  fruit  and  the  bewildering, 
authoritative,  flashing  serpent  the  doomed  one  could  not 
heed.  Leaping  lightly  upward  she  snatched  one  of  the 
lovely  spheres;  she  tasted;  from  head  to  foot  she  thrilled 
equally  with  the  magic  flavor  and  with  her  own  daring — 
and  then,  in  the  very  act,  she  heard  Adam  calling. 

Instantly  she  sprang  for  another  of  the  fateful  globes, 
and,  running  in  the  direction  of  the  beloved  voice,  cried 
out,  as  she  reached  him :  "  Adam,  dearest,  I've  brought  you 
a  fruit  of  the  tree  in  the  midst  of  the  garden.  See  how 
beautiful — and  I've  just  tasted  this  one  myself!  Here — 
try  it — quick !  It  is  the  most  wonderful — the  most  de- 
licious— there's  nothing  like  it  in  the  whole  garden,  and  it 
makes  you  feel — oh — I  can't  express  it — but  as  if  you  could 
touch  the  sky; — and  yet  I've  taken  but  one  mouthful!  " 

"  Eve !  "  cried  Adam,  aghast  and  terrified,  "  what  have 
you  done  ?    Not  the  forbidden  fruit  ?  " 

"  Yes,  the  *  forbidden  '  fruit !  A  most  splendid  creature 
I  never  saw  before,  that  stands  and  moves  upon  his  tail 
and  lifts  himself  in  waving  wreaths  of  all  colors  higher 
than  my  head,  and  on  his  own  head  a  dazzling  crest " 


36  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"  I  know ;  I  named  him  the  *  serpent.'  " 

"  Well,  he  speaks,  Adam — yes,  talks,  just  as  we  do,  and 
can  tell  us  everything.  But  come  !  Come  along,  so  he  can 
tell  you  himself  !  "  And,  turning,  she  went  dancing  swiftly 
back  with  Adam  to  the  Tree,  reaching  which,  her  tempter 
was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  The  deep  and  infamous  Satan 
had  designedly  disappeared,  so  that  upon  the  hapless  Eve 
alone  might  Adam  lay  all  the  blame  of  his  own  impending 
transgression. 

"  Why,"  she  exclaimed,  "  where  is  he  ?  "  and  the  first 
pang  she  had  ever  known  struck  sharp  upon  her  heart; 
"  you  would  have  loved  him  so,  Adam,  dear !  He  was  so 
strange — so  beautiful — and  he  assured  me  we  will  not  die 
at  all  (whatever  that  means)  if  we  eat  this  lovely  fruit;  it 
is  only  that  God  doesn't  want  us  to  be  wise  like  Him  that 
made  Him  forbid  us.  And  I'm  sure  that  is  true,  for  you 
see  I'm  eating  this  one  and  nothing  happens  except  that 
I  feel  entirely  different — grand — and  great  " — throwing 
her  arms  toward  the  sky,  "  and  as  if  I  could  do  anything ! 
Stop  staring  so  at  me,  dearest,"  caressing  him,  "  and  taste 
yours  quickly  and  feel  the  same  that  I  do.  Until  you  try 
you  cannot  conceive  how  glorious  it  is !  "  And  Eve  was  so 
strangely  and  softly  brilliant  and  in  her  accent  was  such 
thrilling,  persuasive  music  that  though  the  agonized  Spirit, 
whispered  to  Adam  also,  "Do  not  touch;  do  not  eat,"  and 
he  distinctly  heard  it,  yet,  like  his  sister  before  him  he 
could  not  heed,  and  so  the  one  small  thing' that  All-Loving 
Deity  had  asked  of  the  beauteous  pair  in  return  for  the 
vast  happiness  bestowed  upon  them  was  refused.  The 
"THOU"  was  betrayed.  The  "I"  was  obeyed.  They 
deserted  the  Law  of  Love — which  is  Life,  and  the  Law 
of  Self — which  is  Death,  was  henceforth  upon  them  and 
upon  all  their  descendants. 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  37 

With  awful  swiftness  the  Luciferian  death-poison  be- 
gan coursing  through  their  veins  in  all  its  potency  of 
physical  degeneration,  for  while  the  matchless  fruit  was 
yet  in  their  mouths,  with  a  shriek  Eve  dropped  the  one 
she  was  eating  and  cried  out — "Adam!  You  are  changed! 
There  is  hair  on  your  face !" 

Involuntarily  Adam  raised  his  hand  to  his  cheek,  but 
nevertheless  he  finished  his  fruit  before  answering;  then, 
looking  searchingly  at  the  horror-stricken  girl,  he  re- 
turned— "And  so  are  you  changed!  Oh,  you  bad — ugly — 
Eve!" — new,  terrible  words  coming  to  his  lips  with  his 
new,  terrible  conceptions.  "  Why,  why  did  you  disobey 
God  and  insist  on  my  disobeying  Him  too?  Now  He  will 
know  that  we  have  eaten  of  the  forbidden  tree !  " 

It  was  true.  The  radiant,  slender,  ethereal  pair,  youth- 
ful hitherto  as  the  dew  and  the  dawn,  had  in  a  moment 
become  matured  man  and  woman,  splendid  indeed  in 
strength  and  glorious  still  in  beauty,  but  ideal  no  longer, 
but  of  the  earth  now,  earthy,  and  with  sex — which  on 
its  birth-plane  of  the  Divine  is  the  viewless  flame  of 
being,  is  soul-affinity,  the  very  zenith  and  ecstasy  of 
the  ""  Thou " — now  stamped  so  brutally  upon  them,  that 
Eve's  one  wild  impulse,  as  that  of  her  true  daughters  ever 
since,  was  instant,  utter  concealment. 

Never  had  her  virgin  vision  beheld  or  conceived  aught 
but  the  benign  harmonies  of  the  exquisite  Paradise  pre- 
pared for  her  by  her  Creator,  and  her  perceptions  were 
all  too  quiveringly  alive  to  their  reverse. 

"  Oh''  she  gasped,  "  we  are  horrible ! "  and  with  the 
speed  of  a  deer  she  darted  toward  the  nearest  wood,  and 
rushed  deeper  and  deeper  into  its  recesses  until  she  came 
upon  a  heavy-foliaged  tree  whose  branches,  sweeping  the 
ground,  mercifully  offered  her  a  hiding-place.     Crouching 


38  NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

therein  beneath  her  long  enfolding  tresses,  her  face  buried 
in  her  hands,  she  wept  and  sobbed  and  agonized  alone 
until  nature  could  weep  no  more.  Then,  gathering  herself 
together,  she  sat  staring  outward  in  blank  despair — stonily 
— silently — not  really  seeing  what  she  saw,  until,  after  a 
long  time,  her  brain  at  last  took  note  that  what  she  was 
gazing  at  through  a  parting  in  the  branches  was  a  bush 
of  long  sharp  thorns  such  as  she  had  never  before  beheld. 
The  swift  resource  and  invention  of  her  sex  awoke  within 
her.  Pulling  a  quantity  of  the  broad  leaves  from  her 
kindly  shelter,  the  tears  streaming  again  the  while,  with 
the  thorns  she  put  together  the  first  of  that  infinite  series 
of  garments  which  have  since  come  from  woman's  hand, 
and  when  she  had  donned  it  she  began  making  one  for 
Adam. 

The  latter,  lonely,  sick  at  heart  and  desperately  afraid, 
at  length  slowly  sought  her  out.  Hearing  him  approach, 
her  burning  face  hidden  on  her  knees,  she  held  out  to  him 
his  kirtle.  Accepting  and  fastening  it,  with  a  groan  of 
despair  he  sank  by  her  side  and  there,  in  quaking,  aw- 
fullest  dread,  did  these  two  first  human  criminals  sit 
speechless  in  the  deepening  shadows  of  the  forest,  await- 
ing the  voice  of  Him  Who  in  the  cool  of  the  day  was  cer- 
tain to  summon  and  to  question  them. 

Oh,  the  sorrow,  the  pity,  the  sympathy  of  that  Divine 
Voice  as  It  foretold  what  through  their  listening  to  the 
Serpent  was  to  befall  their  beautiful  world  and  their  beau- 
tiful selves.  Of  dust  were  they  made  and  to  dust  would 
they  return.  The  ground  would  now  be  found  their  enemy 
instead  of  their  friend;  thorns  and  briars  would  it  bring 
forth  unto  them,  and  from  it  Adam  must  wrest  the  food 
for  himself  and  his  family  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow.  Eve 
would  be  still  more  bitterly  changed.     Besides  the  toil  to 


JVEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  39 

be  shared  with  her  bread-winner  as  his  "  helpmeet,"  she 
must  now  often"  and  often  become  a  mother,  and  every 
birth  would  bring  to  her  excruciating  agony.  Worse  yet, 
instead  of  being  the  friend  and  equal  of  her  adored  Adam, 
henceforth  he  would  regard  and  treat  her  as  his  subject. 
"Thy  yearning  will  be  to  thy  husband,  and  he  will  rule 
over  thee  " — "  will,"  not  "  shall,"  as  in  the  authorized  ver- 
sion,— for  the  Divine  Father  did  not  impose  this  deepest 
"  curse  "  upon  his  erring  daughter,  as  has  been  so  unjustly 
believed;  He  but  prophesied  the  inevitable  consequence  of 
her  following  after  a  lie  instead  of  the  truth — Truth  ever 
giving  freedom,  Lies  always  making  slaves.  As  for  the 
Serpent,  who,  triumphant,  malignant,  was  towering  there 
insolently  beside  them — his  proud  and  mounting  curves 
should  in  future  writhe  along  prone  in  the  dust  until  the 
day  wherein  a  Child  of  Eve  would  bruise  his  ruthless 
head  even  to  the  death. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    SERPENT   VS.    WOMANHOOD. 

The  Masculinism  or  Self  raised  to  the  Highest  Power 
with  which  humanity  was  inoculated  by  Lucifer  through 
the  betrayal  of  Eden,  had  found  its  fitting  incarnation  in 
the  Serpent,  because  the  serpent  embodies  the  most  ter- 
rific possible  form  of  muscular  strength  with  the  mini- 
mum of  heart  and  brain  to  rule  it.  Absolutely  short- 
sighted,* utterly  regardless  of  the  harmony  and  happiness 
of  the  rest  of  the  universe  and  inspired  by  the  single  mo- 
tive of  having  its  own  way,  Masculinism  represents  noth- 
ing but  Force  for  force's  sake,  Power  for  the  sake  of 
power,  Cruelty  for  sake  of  cruelty.  Lust  for  the  sake  of 
lust. 

Protean  in  its  forms,  its  source  and  soul  is  the  once 
supernal  "  Light-bearer  "  who  wilfully  became  the  rival 
and  enemy  of  Creative  Deity — whom  the  Bible  calls  "  Sa- 
tan," "  the  devil,"  that  "  old  serpent,"  "  the  dragon,"  "  the 
prince  of  this  world,"  and  whom  the  Christ  not  only  de- 
clared to  be  "  a  liar  "  and  "  the  father  of  lies,"  but  also 
a  "  murderer  from  the  beginning  " — because  his  Law  of 
Self  or  the  "  I  "  kills  the  Love  or  the  "  Thou "  which 
alone  is  Life. 

After  the  tragedy  of  Eden  had  been  consummated  by 
the  expulsion  of  our  first  parents  from  their  betrothal 
paradise,  it  was  easy  for  this  pitiless  and  sleepless  enemy 

*  Serpents  distinguish  objects  only   within  a  few  feet. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  41 

of  Deity  and  murderer  of  soul-life  to  continue  the  woful 
human  drama  on  the  simple  principle  with  which  he  had 
inaugurated  it.  Satan's  first  victory  had  been  gained  be- 
cause one  of  the  youthful  pair  acted  on  her  own  unaided 
judgment  instead  of  waiting  to  consult  the  companion  to 
whom  God  had  brought  her.  All  his  subsequent  ones 
were  to  follow  because  he  whispered  to  and  impressed 
upon  Adam  that  Eve,  having  chosen  wrongly  in  the  sim- 
plest yet  most  momentous  decision  of  their  entire  ex- 
istence, could  never  again  be  trusted  and  must  never  in 
future  be  consulted.  He,  the  man,  the  stronger,  and  there- 
fore the  Protector,  must  be  the  supreme  arbiter  and  dic- 
tator; she,  the  weaker,  and  therefore  the  Protected,  must 
hear  and  obey  only.  The  man  had  followed  the  woman's 
counsel  once,  and  awful — agonizing — abiding — were  the 
consequences.  In  future  the  woman  must  never  again  use 
her  own  mind  nor  ever  influence  the  mind  of  the  man. 

Thus  through  the  wiles  of  Lucifer — the  author  and  pro- 
moter of  kingcraft  and  priestcraft,  of  autocracy  and 
aristocracy,  of  subjection,  slavery  and  oppression  of  every 
kind  and  degree — did  caste — inequality — enthrone  itself 
in  the  inmost  heart  of  the  first  human  family,  and  under 
this  bitter  transformation  was  the  marriage  of  the  hapless 
pair  consummated  and  the  long  father-and-mother-agony 
of  "  subduing "  the  earth  and  '*  replenishing/'  it  begun. 
To  all  Adam's  sons  was  doubtless  rehearsed  the  folly  of 
their  mother  Eve,  and  by  it  they  and  their  sons  after  them 
were  warned  not  to  consult  nor  listen  to  their  wives,  until 
the  very  condition  Triune  Creative  Deity  had  sought  to 
avoid  for  human  manhood,  namely,  that  it  should  not  be 
intellectually  and  spiritually  "  alone  " — was  established  as 
the  modus  vivendi  of  the  infant  race  and  so  has  con- 
tinued until  this  day.     After  Lucifer's  one  soaring  appeal 


k 


42  XEW   YORK:    A    ^YMPHONIC  STUDY, 

to  the  feminine  intellect—"  Ye  shall  be  as  gods,  knowing 
both  good  and  evil " — Masculinism  never  made  another. 

Womanhood's  physical  service  as  wife,  concubine  or 
courtesan — its  provident  tenderness  as  mother — the  handi- 
crafts womanhood  invented  and  practised  to  promote 
manhood  wealth  and  comfort  or  childhood  life  and  sus- 
tenance— such  functions  women  were  not  only  welcome 
to;  they  were  bought  and  sold  for  their  skill  in  them— 
they  were  beaten  and  starved  if  they  failed  in  them.  But 
from  Eve's  fall  in  the  Garden  to  the  days  when  the  Mary- 
mother  of  Jesus  "kept  his  sayings  in  her  heart,"  and 
Mary  of  Bethany  "  sat  at  his  feet "  to  learn  about  eternal 
things,  and  to  the  brilliant  "  woman  of  Samaria "  was 
revealed  that  "  God  is  Spirit,  and  they  that  worship 
Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth" — few  or 
no  illumining  rays  reached  womanhood's  scorned  and  neg- 
lected intellect. 

Men  on  the  earth  in  general  exemplified  Masculinism. 
As  fathers  and  husbands  they  moulded  womanhood  into 
the  only  thing  they  wanted  of  it,  namely.  Materialism. 
In  turn,  this  Materialism  as  Motherhood  brought  forth 
Masculinism,  and  thus  the  fatal  circle  was  never  broken. 
In  both  sexes  the  Divine,  the  Soul,  was  equally  dead  or 
dormant. 

For  thousands  of  years  in  the  history  of  the  race  it  was 
a  winning  game  with  Lucifer.  True  to  her  mission  the 
Divine  Eternal  Spirit  was  the  faithful  and  sleepless  con- 
science of  every  member  of  the  wayward  and  corrupted 
human  family,  pleading  with  each  and  every  human  spirit 
to  do  the  right  according  to  its  light.  Now  and  then  She 
was  able  to  lift  up  and  inspire  some  great  soul  as  a  leader, 
a  teacher  or  a  witness  for  Light  and  Truth  among  their 
fellows — as  Noah,  Abraham,  Moses,  David,  Isaiah,  Daniel 


NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  43 

— among  the  Bible  heroes — as  Confucius,  Zoroaster, 
Buddha,  Homer,  Socrates,  Plato,  Sophocles — among  the 
Gentiles.  At  times  the  Divine  Father  and  the  Son  came 
to  her  aid  with  the  forces  of  the  universe — as  when  They 
destroyed  with  a  flood  all  the  perverted  race  save  Noah 
and  his  family,  or  delivered  Israel  from  Egypt  by  "signs 
and  wonders  and  a  stretched-out-arm,"  or  caused  the  sun 
to  "stand  still"  at  the  prayer  of  the  fighting  Joshua,  or 
by  lesser  miracles  saved  some  other  hard-pressed  cham- 
pion of  the  True  and  Only  God. 

But  the  manhood  of  all  the  leaders  of  the  race,  even 
the  loftiest,  was  in  each  and  every  case  so  deeply  alloyed 
with  masculinism,  that  the  physical  and  mental  and  moral 
bondage  of  womanhood  was  co-extensive  with  the  sex, 
and  what  we  now  understand  by  "  the  Feminine  "  was  as 
absent  from  the  world  as  the  modern  Art  of  Music  was 
absent.  Simply,  it  was  not  there;  or  rather,  it  was  op- 
pressed and  stamped  out  of  recognition  and  thus  was  no 
more  suspected  by  the  ancient  mind  than  from  the  few 
grass-blades  between  city  stones  a  city  child  who  had 
never  heard  of  them  could  image  forth  the  varied  blooms 
of  woods  and  gardens,  or  the  fruits  and  harvests  of  fields 
and  orchards,  or  the  towering  verdure  of  primeval  forests. 
Through  the  "air-like  words"  (as  she  herself  called 
them)  of  the  Greek  "Psappha"  alone  in  all  those  genera- 
tions of  soul-slavery  did  the  Exiled  Feminine  just  once 
voice  Itself — whispering — ''This  is  what  the  Feminine  can 
do, — but  her  time  is  not  yet  come."  Characteristic  is  it 
that  the  monks,  those  incarnations  of  Masculinism,  should 
so  specially  have  begrudged  and  hated  this  one  peerless 
woman  genius,  that  her  masterpieces  were  universally 
erased  from  their  parchments  in  the  libraries  of  the  earth, 
and  only  the  few  quotations  inscribed  on  vases  or  im- 


44  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

bedded  in  the  writings  of  other  authors  remain  to  witness 
that  the  inspired  *'  Psappha  "  ever  existed  !  * 

That  the  woman-spirit  was  in  every  respect  the  comple- 
ment of  the  man-spirit  was  not  dreamed  of  by  the  relig- 
ious Hebrew,  by  the  transcendent  Greek  or  by  the  law- 
giving Roman.  Though  woman's  chastity  and  love  of 
freedom  were  deified  in  the  goddess  Diana,  her  chastity, 
wisdom,  invention  and  skill  in  the  goddess  Minerva,  her 
chastity  and  wifehood  in  the  goddess  Juno,  her  chastity 
and  motherhood  in  the  goddess  Ceres,  her  beauty,  joy  and 
fascination  in  the  goddess  Venus,  her  grace  in  the  three 
Graces,  her  genius  in  the  nine  Muses — this  magnificent 
galaxy  of  feminine  divinities  reflected  no  prestige  on  the 
miserable  sex  from  which  their  several  attributes  had  been 
derived. 

Everywhere  women  were  despised  and  maltreated  by 
their  master,  man.  The  polygamous  husbands  of  the  East 
could  bring  as  many  wives  into  their  households  as  they 
could  afford  to  purchase.  The  monogamous  husbands  of 
Jewry,  of  Greece  and  of  Rome  besides  carte  blanche 
as  to  concubines  and  slaves  could  divorce  any  wife  at  any 
time  for  any  cause  or  none.  Women  literally  had  no  foot- 
hold of  their  own  upon  the  earth.  The  disciples  of  Jesus 
were  but  ignorant  Jewish  fishermen,  yet  their  attitude 
toward  the  sister  sex  until  changed  by  the  divine  example 
of  the  ''first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed"  was 
equally  scornful  with  that  of  the  Athenian  philosopher  or 
the  Roman  ruler.  When  the  Master  told  them  that  a  man 
might  not  righteously  divorce  his  wife  save  for  infidelity, 
they  at  once  replied, — 'Tf  that  be  the  position  of  a  man 
with  regard  to  his  wife,  it  is  better  not  to  marry," — recip- 

•  At  least,  such  is  the  writer's  theory  of  the  otherwise  inexplicable 
disappearance  of  all  her  works. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  45 

rocal  obligation  as  from  manhood  to  womanhood  being  to 
them  evidently  inconceivable.  "  Thou  hast  had  five  hus- 
bands," said  Jesus  to  the  Woman  of  Samaria,  "  and  he 
whom  thou  now  hast  is  not  thy  husband."  She  had  been 
divorced — handed  on — by  her  family  from  one  husband 
to  another  five  times,  and  now  in  middle  or  declining  life 
was  obliged  to  accept  the  lower  position  of  concubine  and 
to  draw  and  carry  the  water  for  her  lord's  household.  It 
is  not  recorded  of  Jesus  that  when  on  earth  He  met  any 
keener  or  swifter  intelligence  than  that  of  this  poor 
woman,  the  victim  of  masculine  lawlessness  in  the  mar- 
riage relation: — yet  how  often  has  the  Christian  pulpit 
made  her  the  theme  of  its  pious  reprobation ! 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE   RACE   TRAGEDY. 

Thus  the  ghastliest  tragedy  of  earth  is  not  "  man's  in- 
humanity to  man,"  nor  even  man's  ingratitude  to  God. 
Man  cannot  behold  God,  so  that  his  fallings  away  from 
and  aberrations  in  the  service  of  God  are  not,  after  all, 
inconceivable  or  even  surprising.  His  every  brother-man 
being  also  a  possible  rival — that  is,  a  man  who  if  you  do 
not  take  from  him  may  possibly  take  from  you — the  ham- 
mer-and-anvil  social  and  national  policy  of  so  many  mil- 
lenniums was  perhaps  only  to  have  been  expected. 

But  woman  is  and  must  be  man's  another — the  very 
source  and  cradle  and  guardian  of  his  early  existence; 
woman  is  and  must  be  man's  sister,  deriving  from  a  com- 
mon parenthood — his  companion  and  playmate  throughout 
childhood  and  youth;  woman  is  and  must  be  man's  wife 
— his  partner  and  sharer  in  all  the  cares  and  labors  of  his 
adult  life  and  the  mother  of  his  children;  woman  is  and 
must  be  man's  daughter — bone  of  his  bone  and  flesh  of 
his  flesh,  nay,  life  of  his  life,  and  thus  knit  to  him  by  the 
closest  and  tenderest  of  ties  and  the  deepest  of  obliga- 
tions; and  yet  do  but  consider  the  cruelty,  the  contempt, 
the  deprivation,  the  desecration,  the  degradation — the  al- 
most immeasurable  mountain  of  wrong — the  almost  fath- 
omless abyss  of  betrayal — which  the  stronger  half  of  hu- 
manity has,  as  a  rule,  meted  out  to  the  weaker? 

As  merely  a  few  examples — think  of  the  agonizing  suf- 


r: 

L 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  47 

fering  to  the  hapless  womanhood  of  China  through  the 
national  custom  of  feet-binding;  or  that  of  the  widow- 
burning  in  India,  for  which,  when  forbidden  by  the  British 
conqueror,  custom  has  substituted  and  now  upholds  a 
long,  living  death  of  family  scorn,  persecution,  deprivation 
and  bitterest  slavery  infinitely  worse  for  the  widowed  one 
than  the  brief  torture  of  the  funeral  pyre;  or  hark  back 
to  the  four  or  five  millions  of  elderly  or  aged  women 
who  between  the  twelfth  and  seventeenth  centuries  were 
tortured,  drowned,  hanged  and  burned  throughout  Chris- 
tian Europe  as  ''  witches  "  by  Catholics  and  Protestants 
alike — the  Salem  hanging  of  a  very  few  being  but  a  short 
and  gentle  episode  of  the  long,  horrifying  story;  or  re- 
member the  infamy  of  contemporary  London  with  her 
thoroughfares  and  music-halls  infested  nightly  with  at- 
tractive girlhood  and  womanhood  on  open  sale;  or  look- 
ing at  home  let  the  mind  realize  the  appalling  fact  of  the 
"  social  evil "  as  it  exists  all  about  us  and  beneath  us  in 
the  United  States. 

Where  in  the  whole  animal  kingdom  is  a  sex-case  even 
remotely  resembling  this  of  the  human  race,  and  if  we 
deny  as  true  the  Scripture  account  of  the  Temptation  and 
Fall  in  Eden  and  the  several  relations  of  its  four  actors — 
— Deity,  the  Man,  the  Woman  and  Lucifer — ^how  can 
"science"  possibly  account  for  this  monstrous  phenomenon 
of  a  race  divided  by  sex  against  itself  as  the  human  race 
has  ever  been? 

Accepting,  on  the  contrary,  the  narrative  in  Genesis  as 
a  simple  statement  of  fact,  the  otherwise  inscrutable  mys' 
tery  is  solved.  To  prevent  the  triumph  of  God's  Law 
of  Love  in  the  heart  and  in  the  life  of  God's  new  crea- 
ture— Lucifer,  the  Rival  and  Enemy  of  God,  instilled  into 
the  man  scorn,  distrust,  resentment  and  lawlessness  to- 


43  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ward  his  sex-companion.  Being  physically  the  stronger 
the  man  could  impose  upon  the  woman  what  conditions  he 
would.  He  chose  that  throughout  the  whole  range  of  hu- 
man activity  she  should  as  absolutely  as  possible  be  his  in- 
ferior— and  the  whole  supervening  human  tragedy  was  the 
inevitable  result. 

Now,  however,  confronts  womanhood  the  question : 
How  came  it  that  the  divine  All-Father  of  the  Universe 
in  Whom  dwells  every  ideal  of  justice,  of  nobleness,  of 
chivalry,  of  tenderness — could  contemplate  and  carry  out 
the  creation  of  a  race  the  mother-half  of  which  should  be 
in  such  ignominious  and  degrading  subjection  to  the  other 
that  the  Hebrew  to  whose  Scriptures  we  owe  the  knowl- 
edge of  this  All-Father  and  his  Law  of  Love  used  to  stand 
weekly  in  his  synagogue  and  say,  "I  thank  Thee,  O  God, 
that  Thou  hast  not  made  me  a  woman" — while  from  the 
opposite  side  of  the  same  synagogue  his  wife  humbly  re- 
sponded ""/  thank  Thee,  O  God,  that  thou  hast  made  me 
as  I  am" — both  of  them  in  this  act  of  worship  equally 
voicing  humanity  all  over  the  world,  since  to  this  hour 
even  the  Christian  father  at  the  bedside  of  his  newly-born 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  audibly  rejoices  and  triumphs 
when  the  baby  is  a  son.  but  silently  regrets  and  deprecates 
it  if  it  be  a  daughter? 

How  terrible  to  be  thus  branded  from  birth — to  be  thus 
everywhere  and  always  undervalued,  unwelcome,  be- 
grudged ! 

And  yet  this  is  "  womanhood  " — human  womanhood — 
even  after  nineteen  hundred  years  of  that  Gospel  in  which 
"  is  neither  Jew  nor  Gentile,  is  neither  bond  nor  free,  is 
neither  male  nor  female — but  all  are  one  in  Christ  Jesus." 

If  Deity  be  Male  and  Manhood  only — and  if  to  this 
Deity  alone  does  the  "  weaker "  sex  owe  its  unequally 


xVEJV    YORK-:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  49 

trammelled  and  scorned  and  suffering  existence — then 
thinking  womanhood  can  well  be  excused  for  skepticism 
— for  refusal  to  beheve  in  an  Omniscient  and  Omnipotent 
God  Who  could  deliberately  design  and  give  life  to  such  a 
victim. 

But  if  Deity  include  Eternal  Womanhood  no  less  than 
Eternal  Manhood,  and  if,  in  the  counsels  of  Deity  before 
creation,  the  Divine  Ineffable  Mother — foreseeing  her 
own  disdain  by  Lucifer — in  the  subtlety  and  perfection 
of  her  All-wisdom  Herself  proposed  the  creation  of  this 
human  daughter  so  certain  to  be  remorselessly  sacrificed 
by  Lucifer — then  can  one  woman,  at  least,  repeat  with 
her  Jewish  sister,  "'  /  thank  Thee,  O  God,  that  Thou  hast 
made  me  as  I  am! " 

For  the  writer — studying  to  explain  and  excuse  the 
divine  permission  of  earthly  injustice  and  of  the  profana- 
tion of  womanhood  which  is  its  heart — can  arrive  at  no 
other  conclusion  save  that  the  Heaven-Mother,  in  her 
sad  infinite  thought,  desired  and  obtained  our  little  planet 
as  the  arena  whereon  through  the  agency  of  a  race  made 
in  the  Divine  Image  and  Likeness^  and  more  especially 
through  the  half  of  it  made  after  Her  Own,  She,  the 
Heaven-Son  co-working  with  Her,  should  essay  the  con- 
version of  Lucifer  to  Deity; — her  "Plan,  her  strange 
plan,"  being  that  when  through  the  earth-triumph  of 
Lucifer  and  his  Law  of  Self  men  in  general  should 
have  become  subjects  and  slaves,  and  all  women  the  de- 
spised slaves  of  these  slaves  (for  let  Manhood  sink  as 
deep  as  it  may,  Womanhood  is  ever  in  a  deeper  deep 
below  it),  then  the  Heaven-Son  should  "bring  to  pass  his 
Act,  his  strange  act,"  by  appearing  on  earth  to  share  hu- 
manity's Death  through  Self  and  to  offer  as  the  sole 
rescue  Deity's  Life  through  Love. 


50  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

At  this  message  from  the  Heaven-Father,  and  at  this 
giving  everything  by  the  Heaven- Son,  profaned  and 
trampled  womanhood  would  begin  to  lift  its  poor  fallen 
head ;  the  infinite  sufferings  and  humiliations  of  the 
Redeemer  would  give  it  patience  with  its  own;  his 
infinite  love  would  inspire  infinite  love  in  return;  when 
Redeemed  Manhood  should  begin  proclaiming  everywhere 
the  Law  and  the  Life  of  Love,  Redeemed  Womanhood — 
as  well  as  for  its  weakness,  ignorance  and  slavery  it 
might — would  begin  to  live  that  Life,  to  keep  that  Law 
and  to  teach  It  to  its  little  children.  Thence  very  slowly 
but  very  surely  each  generation  would  love  a  little 
more  and  a  little  better;  sons  would  be  born  and  would 
grow  up  more  and  more  in  the  Likeness  and  in  the 
Mind  of  the  Divine  Son;  this  Christianized  Brotherhood 
would  more  and  more  pity,  liberate  and  cherish  its  Chris- 
tianized Sisterhood  until  at  last,  from  the  blind  thrall  and 
tool  of  Lucifer,  World-manhood  would  become  the  wise 
and  eager  Co-worker  with  Deity  and  of  its  own  free  will 
would  seek  to  establish  and  maintain  "  happiness  "  upon 
God's  little  earth  even  as  it  is  maintained  by  the  angels 
throughout  God's  unmeasurable  heaven. 

Thus  without  the  autocratic  "  force  "  which  alone  Luci- 
fer would  deem  to  be  "  god-like "  and  largely  through 
the  faithful  and  patient  love  of  the  lowest  and  feeblest 
of  all  its  vast  hierarchy  of  souls — the  soul  of  human 
woman — would  Triune  Eternal  Deity  rebuke  and  vin- 
dicate Itself  against  its  power-hungering,  power-invok- 
ing rebel,  and  would  prove  to  the  whole  witnessing  crea- 
tion and  for  all  eternity  that  even  "  the  foolishness  of  the 
Creator  is  wiser  than  the  creature,  and  even  the  weakness 
of  the  Creator  is  stronger  than  the  creature,  and  that  be- 
fore creation  was  the  Creator  could  ordain  the  weakest 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  51 

thing  of  that  creation  to  confound  the  mightiest  thing 
thereof,  and  the  basest  things  of  that  creation  and  the 
things  despised  could  the  Creator  choose,  yea,  and  the 
things  which  are  not  to  bring  to  nought  the  things  that 
are "  * — so  that  the  awful  Luciferian  Secession  once 
lived  through  and  healed,  the  progressive  evolution  of 
Heaven-Bliss  could  never  again  be  interrupted  because 
no  finite  created  soul  would  ever  again  exalt  itself  against 
Infinite  Uncreate  Spirit  as  the  insensate  Light-bearer 
would  dare  to  exalt  himself  and  would  thus  bring  about  the 
Tragedy  of  the  Universe  which  would  be  "  Hell"  and 
the  Tragedy  of  Deity  which  would  be  the  "  Cross,"  and 
the  Tragedy  of  the  Human  Race  which  would  be 
"  Woman." 

And  if,  as  this  writer  believes,  the  foregoing  were  the 
Plan  of  the  Heaven-Mother — was  it  then  accepted  by  the 
Heaven-Father  because  by  no  other  could  He  so  humiliate 
and  efface  Himself  and  therefore  suffer  in  the  suffering 
of  Deity  for  sin  as  by  allowing  the  Divine  Son  and  the 
Spirit  so  infinitely  dearer  to  Him  than  Himself,  to  yield 
Themselves  to  the  blasphemy  and  torture  of  the  demonized 
Lucifer  and  yet  not  exert  his  own  omnipotence  for  their 
rescue  and  avenging?  And  further  did  He  accept  this 
Plan  because,  being  carried  out  by  the  Divine  Son  and 
the  Spirit,  Theirs  chiefly  would  be  the  resulting  love  and 
glory  from  it  and  their  Sacrificial  Omnipotence  thus  be 
recognized  and  exalted  side  by  side  with  his  own  Crea- 
tive Omnipotence?  And  again  did  He  accept  this  plan 
because  it  would  be  meet  that  Lucifer,  having  scorned 
Love  and  worshipped  Strength,  should  largely  be  under- 
mined by  the  earth-daughter  whom  Lucifer  would  thrust 
down  to  the  lowest  depth  as  ""  the  lost  beyond  all  lost 
*  /  Corinthians,  i,  28. 


V 

52  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ones"  of  his  Kingdom  of  Force?  And  fourthly  did  the 
Heaven-Father  accept  this  seeming-ruthless  Plan  because 
He  purposed  with  Himself  one  day  to  recompense  his 
hapless  earth-daughter  "  above  all  that  she  could  ask  or 
think"  for  her  humiliation  when  on  earth  as  the  hu- 
man representative  of  the  Self-defenceless,  Non-resisting 
"  Spirit " — ^her  Heaven-Mother*  And  finally  did  the  Fa- 
ther make  his  own  this  "  strange  "  Plan  of  overcoming 
Lucifer  through  Suffering  Patience  instead  of  by  Con- 
quering Strength — because  when  the  promised  "  restora- 
tion of  all  things  "  should  have  progressed  so  far  that 
Lucifer  himself  should  be  the  only  sinner  and  therefore 
the  only  created  sufferer  now  left  in  the  universe,  would 
not  even  he  at  last  break  down  into  wildest  love-yearn- 
ing toward  his  infinitely  loving  Creators,  when  he  should 
realize  that  They  were  not  triumphing  over  him  in  his 
extremity,  but  were  waiting  for  him  to  come  to  Them  of 
his  own  accord  and  thus  release  Them  from  their  con- 
tinuing share  in  every  throb  of  his  self-invited  agonies 
from  the  very  beginning  and  with  pain  as  much  more 
exquisite  than  his  own  as  "  their  Infinite  was  beyond  his 
finite?" 

Whether  these  thoughts  be  true  or  no,  it  is  thus  that 
the  writer,  at  least,  would  answer  the  sensual  and  the 
skeptical  who  fling  in  their  Creator's  face  Omar  Khay- 
yam's 

Oh,  Thou,  who  Man  of  baser  Earth  didst  make, 
And  in  his  Paradise  didst  loose  the  Snake    — 

And  thus  also  is  it  that  she  can  "  thank  "  The  Triune 
Deity  for  making  her  "  as  she  is." 

*  Romans,  8,  20,  2i. 


i 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

JESUS    THE    EMANCIPATOR. 

In  the  lurid  History  of  Humanity  after  the  Garden  of 
Eden,  nation  after  nation  rose  and  flourished,  then  de- 
cayed and  fell,  because  the  Principle  of  Self  or  Death  was 
the  inspiration  and  motive-force  of  each  and  every  one  of 
them.  In  vain  Deity  chose  and  in  the  heart-centre  of  the 
eastern  hemisphere  planted  and  trained  one  little  race  as 
the  "  covenanted  people,"  which  should  exemplify  the 
Law  of  National  Happiness,*  and  therefore  of  National 
Life  before  the  whole  wayward  earth.  Amid  the  univer- 
sal and  crushing  domination  of  masculinism  the  benign 
altruistic  institutions  of  the  Republic  of  Israel  could  not 
take  a  living  human  hold.  After  two  centuries  of  vicissi- 
tude this  republic  was  abandoned  by  its  citizens  for  an 
absolute  monarchy,  and  though  in  later  centuries  the 
torch  of  liberty  in  the  tribal  sense  was  lifted  aloft  by  the 
successive  Republics  of  Greece  and  Rome,  these  neither 
did  nor  could  they  create  in  the  human  breast  the  Divine 
Ideal  of  Universal  Personal  Freedom. 

So  far  from  it,  that  from  the  world-conquering  Re- 
public of  Rome  evolved  itself  in  logical  sequence  the  most 
concentrated  expression  of  Masculinism  that  Aryan  civili- 
zation ever  knew;  for  the  Caesar  Imperator  of  that  vast 
military  organization  was  not  alone  the  supreme  sover- 
eign; he  was  worshipped  also  as  a  divinity,  and  while  yet 

*  "  Thou  shah  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself." — Leviticus,  19,   18. 


54  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

a  living  man  altars  were  devoted  and  religious  rites  were 
paid  to  him ! 

But  when  through  Roman  masterfulness  the  great  Luci- 
ferian  Principle  of  Self  had  thus  perfectly  and  logically 
triumphed — had  reached  its  earthly  apex,  and  was  fully 
and  firmly  enthroned  above  prostrate  nations  every  family 
of  which,  owing  to  the  horrible  and  inexorable  taxation 
system  of  the  Empire,  had  ever  before  its  eyes  the  pos- 
sibility of  being  sold  apart  into  slavery — when  humanity 
in  general  had  at  last  got  down  to  this  common  abyss  of 
hopeless  woe — there  appeared  in  an  insignificant  little 
town  of  the  long-dead  Republic  of  Israel,  now  one  of 
Rome's  most  insignificant  provinces,  the  promised  incar- 
nation of  that  Divine  Manhood  Eternal  in  the  Heavens 
in  whose  image  and  after  whose  likeness  manhood  on 
earth  had  been  created.  A  Nazarene  carpenter  whose 
mother,  notwithstanding  her  lowly  position,  was  a  de- 
scendant of  King  David,  suddenly  announced  Himself 
as  the  long-promised,  long-looked-for,  long-sighed-for  and 
wept-for  Champion  of  trampled  mankind  against  its  op- 
pressors and  therefore,  of  course,  against  the  Masculin- 
ism  which  is  the  inspiration  of  them  all. 

In  the  synagogue  of  that  Nazareth  which  for  all  his 
life  had  been  his  home,  this  youthful  Jesus  whose  very 
name  meant  "  Saviour,"  rose  and  read  to  his  fellow- 
townsmen  his  divine  commission :  "  The  Spirit  of  the 
Lord  is  upon  Me,  because  He  hath  anointed  Me  to  preach 
glad  tidings  to  the  poor.  He  hath  sent  Me  to  heal  the 
broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliverance  to  the  captives  and 
recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind;  to  set  at  liberty  them  that 
are  bruised;  to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord." 

In  the  course  of  his  mission  Jesus  declared  Himself 
"the  Light  of  the  world;  he  that  followeth  Me  shall  not 


L 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  55 

walk  in  darkness,  but  shall  have  the  light  of  life ;  " — 
"  I  and  my  Father  are  One ;  " — "  He  who  hath  seen  Me 
hath  seen  the  Father ;  " — "  I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the 
Life;" — "Before  Abraham  was  I  AM;" — "If  you  con- 
tinue in  my  word  you  shall  know  the  truth  and  the  truth 
shall  make  you  free ;  " — "  A  new  commandment  I  give 
unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another  as  I  have  loved  you ;  " 
— "  Love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that  curse  you,  do  good 
to  them  that  hate  you  and  pray  for  them  which  despite- 
fully  use  you  and  persecute  you ;  " — "  I  say  unto  you — 
Resist  not  evil,  but  if  a  man  smite  you  on  the  right  cheek 
turn  to  him  the  other  also;  " — "  Be  ye  therefore  perfect, 
even  as  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  Perfect." 

When  John  saw  Jesus  coming  to  be  baptized,  he  cried — 
"  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  Which  taketh  away  the  sins  of 
the  world !  "  The  disciple  Peter  declared,  "  Thou  art  the 
Anointed  One,  the  Son  of  the  Living  God."  The  Evan- 
gelist John  called  Him  "  the  Only-Begotten  Son  of  the 
Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth."  Of  Himself  He  con- 
stantly spoke  as  the  "  Son  of  man,"  but  as  He  was  careful 
never  to  call  Mary  of  Nazareth  his  "  Mother,"  and  since 
He  explicitly  showed  the  Pharisees  that  David  could  not 
claim  as  a  "  son  "  Him  Whom  he  called  his  "  Lord,"  *  it 
seems  evident  that  Jesus  meant  that  Himself  was  the 
"  Son,"  not  of  earthly  manhood  but  of  the  Divine  or 
Archetypal   Manhood   Eternal    in   the   Heavens. 

The  stupendous  sayings  of  Jesus  were  sent  home  to  his 
hearers  by  displays  of  power  over  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse equally  stupendous  yet  to  Him  effortless  and  matter- 
of-course  as  the  words  themselves.  Literally,  He  had  but 
to  "  speak  and  it  was  done !  " 

For  a  very  few  years  Jesus  the  Christ  lived  and 
taught  and  wrought  after  this  unheard-of,  this  unimagin- 
*Mark  12,  35. 


V 

56  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

able  manner;  and  then,  because  the  all-ruling  Masculin- 
ism  of  the  day  could  not  any  longer  suffer  a  propaganda 
so  manifestly  destructive  of  itself,  it  put  Him  to  one  of 
the  most  dreadful  and  shameful  of  all  the  dreadful  and 
shameful  deaths  it .  had  for  ages  devised  and  practised 
against  its  human  victims. 

This  monstrous  arrest  and  execution  came  when  hope 
and  faith  and  expectation  in  and  when  love  and  awe  and 
passion  for  the  New  Leader  were  at  their  highest  in  Jeru- 
salem— when  "all  the  world  was  gone  after  Him" — 
when  the  crowding  Passover  multitudes  were  eager  to 
proclaim  Him  "  King/'  and  when  He  had  no  enemies 
save  the  small  corporations  of  Pharisees  and  priests  who 
hated  Him  because  they  "  envied  "  Him.  Yet  inexplicably 
He  abandoned  everything  and  like  "  a  lamb  led  to  the 
slaughter "  submitted  passively  to  the  vengeful  satanism 
and  self-hood  which  in  a  few  hearts  had  risen  up  against 
Him. 

When  hanging  upon  his  cross  of  agony  He  did  not 
show  the  power  He  had  claimed  by  coming  down  from 
it  as  his  crucifiers  now  taunted  Him  to  do,  and  though 
on  the  third  day  thereafter  He  indeed  rose  from  the 
dead  as  He  had  promised,  He  did  not  burst  forth  in  a 
blaze  of  glory  such  that  all  Jerusalem  must  be  over- 
whelmed and  converted.  Instead,  in  the  dark  of  early 
morning  He  glided  silently  from  his  tomb  and  on  that 
triumphant  day  of  days  appeared  but  to  the  few  who  were 
most  deeply  mourning  for  Him.  During  the  remainder  of 
his  sojourn  on  earth  He  was  rarely  seen  and  only  once 
by  "  as  many  as  five  hundred  at  one  time,"  and  his  spe- 
cial disciples  alone  witnessed  the  closing  marvel  of  his 
ascension  and  final  vanishing  into  the  sky. 

Now  why,  when  on  earth,  did  the  Divine  Eternal  Son 
assume  a  character  and  fulfill  a  career  so  absolutely  in 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  57 

live  and  move  and  have  his  being  in  such  infinite  con- 
trast to  the  boundless  power  and  glory  with  which  the 
Father  had  glorified  Him  "  before  the  world  was  "  and 
would  "  glorify  Him  again  "  ?  Why  did  He  come  into  the 
world  not  by  his  own  agency  as  a  Self-existing,  Self-di- 
recting, Transcending  Personality  before  Whom  "  every 
knee  must  bow,"  but  (of  all  things)  as  the  helpless,  new- 
born babe  of  a  lowly  girl?  Why  throughout  his  earthly 
sojourn  was  He  "  filled  with  the  Spirit " — was  He  "  led 
by  the  Spirit" — was  He  "driven  by  the  Spirit"?  Why 
was  the  very  first  word  of  his  ministry — "  The  Spirit 
of  the  Lord  is  upon  me  "  ?  Above  all,  why,  just  before 
going  to  the  fearful  cross,  did  He  tell  his  stricken  and 
bewildered  disciples  that  it  was  "  expedient "  or  "  good  " 
for  them  that  He  should  go  away,  "  for  if  I  go  not  away 
the  Comforter  will  not  come  unto  you  " — that  Comforter 
Which  He  further  explained  to  be  the  "  Spirit  of  Truth  " 
Who  should  come  to  them  "  from  the  Father  "  and  should 
make  them  "  know  the  truth  "  and  should  "  teach  them 
all  things  "  and  "  bring  all  things  to  their  remembrance  " 
whatsoever  He  Himself  "had  told  them?" 

What  was  the  Invisible  Presence  to  which  Jesus  so 
absolutely  surrendered  Himself  when  in  the  world,  and 
Which  now  was  to  be  given  to  the  disciples  as  even  better 
for  them  than  his  own?  Could  anything  in  the  whole 
universe  possibly  be  so  precious  and  so  priceless  as  the 
daily  and  hourly  companionship  of  this  adored  Being 
Who  "  spake  as  never  man  spake  " — Who  loved  as  never 
man  loved? 

Let  us  briefly  consider  the  characteristics  and  functions 
of  the  "  Holy  Spirit "  as  revealed  in  the  New  Testament 
in  order  to  discover,  if  possible,  the  Scripture  explanation 
of  this  "  mystery." 


CHAPTER   IX. 

"the  spirit." 

I. 

When  the  angel  Gabriel  announced  to  the  Virgin 
Mary  that  she  was  to  become  a  mother,  he  added 
that  the  Child  which  would  be  born  of  her  would  be 
"great"  and  would  be  called  the  "Son  of  God."  The 
pure  and  docile  but  comprehending  and  high-spirited 
girl  inquiring  how  this  could  be — he  told  her  that  the 
"  Holy  Spirit  "  would  "  come  upon  "  her,  and  the  "  power 
of  the  Highest "  would  "  overshadow  "  her,  and  therefore 
that  "  Holy  Thing "  which  would  be  born  of  her  would 
be  called  the  "  Son  of  the  Highest." — Now,  Who  is  the 
"Highest"  but  "God  the  Father  of  Heaven?"  Can 
then  it  be  expressed  in  plainer  terms  that  the  Heaven- 
Father  AND  THE  Heaven-Mother  were  the  Dual 
Life-Forces  Which  Evolved  this  Climax  of  All 
Created  Life — the  perfect  human  form  within  whose 
breathing  veil  the  Uncreate  Heaven-Son  was  to  meet  and 
overcome  Lucifer? 

And  yet,  obvious  as  is  this  commentary  when  once  it 
is  pointed  out,  the  writer,  though  for  years  scrutinizing 
the  Scriptures  for  every  confirmation  of  her  theory  of 
the  Spirit,  did  not  read  aright  the  angelic  declaration 
until  she  came  upon  it  in  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Miller  Jeffries's 
original  study  of  the  same  subject.*     So  far  from  it,  the 

*  The  Great  Mystery,  note  E,  p.  53.  (Published  by  Geo.  W.  Jacotj 
&  Co.,  Philadelphia,  1901.)  I  earnestly  hope  all  my  readers  will  get  and 
read  this  book. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  59 

writer  could  not  see  how  the  Holy  Spirit,  if  indeed  the 
Nutritive  or  Perfective  Energy  of  the  Divine  Trinity, 
could  inaugurate  a  human  or  any  other  life — this  being 
the  prerogative  alone  of  the  Creative  or  Originative 
Energy  of  that  Trinity. 

II. 
At  the  baptism  of  Jesus  by  John,  the  "  Spirit "  de- 
scended upon  Him  "  in  the  form  of  a  dove  "  and  "  re- 
mained "  upon  Him.  Now  the  dove  is  a  purely  feminine 
emblem,  and  is,  moreover,  of  the  entire  animated  king- 
dom the  special  and  perfect  type  of  conjugal  love  and 
union — being  born  always  in  pairs  and  these  pairs  being 
rarely  absent  from  each  other  one  moment;  if  one  flies 
from  a  roof  to  the  ground,  the  other  immediately  follows. 

III. 

Jesus  was  "  filled  with  the  Spirit,"  and  when  His  ene- 
mies said  He  had  an  "  unclean  "  spirit.  He  immediately 
declared  that  "  all  manner  of  sin  and  blasphemy  shall  be 
forgiven  unto  men,  but  blasphemy  against  the  Spirit  shall 
not  be  forgiven  unto  men.  And  whosoever  speaketh  a 
word  against  the  Son  of  Man  it  shall  be  forgiven  him,  but 
whosoev^  speaketh  against  the  Spirit  it  shall  not  be  for- 
given him,  neither  in  this  world,  neither  in  the  world  to 
come."  * 

Could  this  tremendous  warning,  uttered  in  immediate 
connection  with  the  hellish  slander  against  the  "  Spirit " 
with  which  Jesus  was  "  filled,"  have  referred  to  anything 
save  the  unapproachable  purity  of  the  Spirit?  But  purity 
— personal  stainlessness — personal  inviolability — is  and 
ever  has  been  the  quintessential  of  womanhood — the  sine 
qua  non  equally  of  girlhood,  of  wifehood  and  of  mother- 
hood— of  the  real  no  less  than  of  the  ideal  Feminine. 
♦  AfaU.  12,  31.     Mark  3,  29,  30.     Lukg  12,  10. 


6o  NEW   YORK:    A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

IV. 

Note  further  that  the  Saviour  did  not  say  that  the 
"  Spirit "  will  not  forgive  slander  against  Itself,  but  slan- 
der "  shall  not  be  forgiven."  Not  forgiven,  then,  by 
whom?  Of  course  by  the  Lawgivers,  Rulers  and  Judges 
of  the  Universe — by  the  Divine  Eternal  Father  and  Him 
to  Whom  the  Father  "  has  committed  all  power  in  heaven 
and  in  earth  " — the  Divine  Eternal  Son. 

Here  then  we  seem  to  have  the  Divine  Manhood  of 
Triune  Deity  declaring  Itself  the  Guardian  and  Cham- 
pion of  the  Divine  Womanhood  of  that  Deity,  and  to  find, 
therefore,  that  the  original  source  and  home  of  chivalry, 
which  is  the  knightly  defence  of  the  weaker  sex  by  the 
stronger,  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Divine  Eternal  Father 
and  his  Divine  Eternal  Son ! 

For,  as  has  been  intimated  before,  because  of  the  Perfect 
Feminine  of  which  the  Spirit  is  the  Infinite  Archetype, 
in  and  for  Herself  She  is  defenceless.  She  is  Love — She 
is  Beauty — She  is  Wisdom — She  is  Freedom — She  is 
Charm  endless,  inscrutable,  irresistible;  but  in  bringing 
Herself  to  bear  She  is  Influence  only — She  is  Persuasion 
only — giving  everything — claiming  nothing — counselling, 
illuminating,  inspiring — pleading,  comforting,  nourishing 
and  perfecting — but  not  law-giving,  not  governing,  not 
condemning,  not  punishing,  and  therefore  that  Form  of 
Omnipotence  Which  Lucifer  had  not  understood — Which 
had  altogether  escaped  him — and  Which  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Trinity  probably  for  that  very  reason  was 
deputed  in  the  councils  of  Deity  to  conduct  the  long  moral 
combat  against  him.  " '  Not  by  might,  nor  by  power,  but 
by  my  Spirit'  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts " — that  is,  "  Not  by 
the  might,  O  Lucifer,  which  you  can  see,  nor  by  the  power 


NEW    YORK:     A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  6i 

which  you  can  estimate,  but  by  the  Divine  Eternal  Femi- 
nine Who  neither  possesses  nor  wishes  to  possess  any- 
thing in  the  whole  universe  besides  the  infinite  joy  of  lov- 
ing and  being  loved — must  you  at  length  be  disarmed 
of  your  pride  and  melted  from  your  resistance." 

V. 

"  The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy,  peace,  long-suf- 
fering, gentleness,  goodness,  faith,  meekness,  temperance; 
against  such  there  is  no  law."  But  all  these  are  the  char- 
acteristic feminine  virtues — are  the  rainbow  flashings 
from  the  deep  translucence  of  the  flawless  feminine  dia- 
mond. 

Peculiarly  is  this  true  of  the  "  joy  "  which  comes  sec- 
ond on  the  list. 

"Sorrowful,''  sighed  a  down-trodden  Indian  mother, 
"  is  the  lot  of  woman/' 

But  if  "  sorrowful  "  be  woman's  lot,  it  is  because  Mas- 
culinism  and  Materialism  have  made  it  so.  Not  so  was 
it  intended  nor  so  will  it  be  when  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  has 
done  its  perfect  work.  The  smiling,  carolling,  light- 
hearted,  untrammelled  girl — she  is  the  reminiscence  of 
that  "  joy  "  with  which  innocent  Eve  was  dowered  in  the 
Garden,  and  which  will  return  to  all  her  daughters  when 
once  they  realize  that  for  them  also  as  for  their  brothers 
there  is  a  Divine  Archetype  Eternal  in  the  Heavens  in 
whose  image  and  after  whose  likeness  they  were  created 
and  to  reflect  whose  perfections  and  whose  loveliness  is 
their  one  great  mission  upon  earth. 

VI. 

Jesus  said  to  Nicodemus — "  The  wind  bloweth  where  it 
listeth  and  thou  hearest  the  sound  thereof,  but  canst  not 


V 

62  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

tell  whence  it  cometh  nor  whither  it  goeth ;  even  so  is  the 
Spirit." 

By  this  our  Lord's  magnificent  comparison  of  the 
"  Spirit "  to  the  trackless  and  careering  "  wind  "  He  in- 
dicates the  perfect  freedom  and  self-direction  of  the 
Spirit  and  therefore  the  mighty  fact  that  in  her  nature 
the  Eternal  Feminine  is  not  enslaved,  but  is  free,  self- 
governing,  unlimited,  even  as  the  Divine  Eternal  Man- 
hood is  free,  self-governing,  unlimited. 

How  continually  do  men  rail  at  women  as  "  capricious," 
"  uncertain,"  "  changeable,"  "  inconsistent,"  "  not  know- 
ing their  own  minds  " — when  the  real  trouble  is  merely 
that  they  cannot  trace  the  underlying  laws  and  motives 
of  feminine  action  any  more  than  they  do  or  can  fix  the 
way  of  the  wind  or  of  the  Divine  Eternal  Spirit. 

But  in  absolute  contrast  with  the  attitude  toward  and 
treatment  of  human  womanhood  by  human  manhood,  the 
Divine  Manhood  Eternal  in  the  Heavens  utterly  trusts 
the  Divine  Feminine,  exalting  and  proclaiming  Her  as 
the  very  "  Spirit  of  Truth  "  Itself,  and  promising  to  all 
who  "  continue  in  the  word  "  of  the  Divine  Son  that  this 
Spirit  of  Truth  will  "  come  unto  them,"  will  "  guide  them 
into  all  truth  "  and  when  they  "  know  the  truth  "  that 
freedom — the  breath  of  life  of  the  Spirit  Itself  and  the 
boon  without  which  all  others  are  a  mockery — shall  be 
theirs,  for  the  "  truth  "  shall  make  them  '*  free." 

Away  then  W'ith  the  satanic  rubbish  preached  to  and 
about  womanhood  for  so  many  generations — that  "  no 
true  woman  is  happy  until  she  has  found  her  master!" 
No  "  true "  woman  nor  any  other  woman  nor  any  self- 
conscious  intelligence  whatsoever  wants  a  "  master."  The 
very  lowest  and  meanest  soul  in  the  universe  wants  above 
all  things  its  freedom  and  its  own  self-direction,  and  just 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  (>t, 

to  the  extent  to  which,  whether  deservedly  or  not,  it  is 
deprived  of  that  freedom,  to  that  extent  in  its  inmost 
heart  it  suffers  and  in  its  own  sight  is  shamed,  humihated 
and  miserable.  Even  ignorant  and  utterly  helpless  child- 
hood longs  for  the  day  when  it  shall  be  "  grown-up  and 
not  have  to  mind,"  while  to  the  adult  of  either  sex  subjec- 
tion never  was  and  never  can  be  anything  but  a  penalty. 

"  Ligeia,  Ligeia, 

My  beautiful  one 
Whose  harshest  idea 

Will  to  melody  run, — 
Say  is  it  thy  will 

On  the  breezes  to  toss 
Or  capriciously  still 

Like  the  lone  albatross 
Incumbent  on  night 

As  she  on  the  air 
To  keep  watch  with  delight 

On  the  harmony  there?  " 

In  this  world-famous  verse  of  syllabled  music  was  not 
the  rapt  poet  "  whose  heart-strings  were  a  lute  "  but  echo- 
ing a  strain  caught  from  the  Free  Feminine  Divined 

VII. 

The  earthly  mission  of  the  Spirit — to  "  glorify  "  not  It- 
self but  the  Divine  Eternal  Son — is  feminine;  for  just  as 
throughout  the  nineteen  Christian  centuries  "  Christ "  has 
been  kept  ever  in  the  foreground  of  Christian  conscious- 
ness while  the  Spirit,  though  the  active  and  ceaseless 
Agent  in  the  spread  and  triumph  of  His  Name,  has  been 
ever  in  the  background  and  but  little  mentioned  or  re- 
membered— so  throughout  human  history  has  typical  wom- 
anhood similarly  remained  content  in  obscurity  to  carry 


64  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY 

on  the  daily  family  work  and  bear  the  daily  family  bur- 
dens, happy  if  only  the  manhood  nearest  and  dearest  to  it 
is  succeeding  and  honored  on  the  outside  stage  of  life. 

And  not  only  is  the  "  mission  "  of  the  Spirit  feminine. 
The  way  it  is  carried  out  is  that  of  the  ideal  wife  and  mother 
who,  wrapped  up  and  lost  in  husband  and  son,  continually 
refers  to  them  as  her  authority  even  when  expressing  her 
own  view-s  or  energizing  her  own  plans. — For  illimitable 
as  is  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit,  She  comes  not  "to  us  as 
from  her  own  initiative,  but  the  Divine  Son  says  that  He 
"  will  send  "  the  Comforter  to  us  "  from  the  Father,"  and 
He  adds  that  this  Spirit  of  Truth  will  not  speak  "  from 
Herself  " — that  is,  from  her  own  views  and  purposes — 
"  but  what  things  soever  She  shall  hear  these  shall  She 
speak."  * — Can  womanly  self-forgetfulness  and  humility 
farther  go  than  first  (as  this  writer  supposes)  to  suggest 
the  plan  by  which  Deity  should  essay  the  conversion  of 
the  great  Rebel  against  Deity,  and  then,  when  {he  plan  is 
approved  and  adopted  by  the  Father  and  the  Son,  to  strive 
for  its  success  only  as  their  Representative? 

The  petulant  John  Ruskin — finished  specimen  of  self- 
satisfied  and  self-exalting  British  masculinism — some- 
where frets  and  finds  fault  because,  though  modern  wom- 
anhood is  so  feeble  and  inconsiderable  as  compared  with 
modern  manhood,  yet  the  lafter  habitually  calls  his  most 
wonderful  and  achieving  creations — e.g.  his  ship,  his 
locomotive,  his  steam-engine^not  "he"  but  "she!" 

If  Ruskin  could  have  perceived  and  acknowledged  the 
Divine  Feminir.e  in  Deity,   the  apparent  paradox  would 

*  John,  16,  13,  R.  V.  "He  shall  not  speak  of  Himself;  but  what 
things  soever  He  shall  hear,  these  shall  He  speak."  So  it  stands  as 
translated  from  the  Greek,  but  our  Lord's  language  was  not  Greek,  and 
how  do  we  know  that  He  did  not  use  a  feminine  pronoun? 


NEIV    YORK:    A  ^SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  65 

have  been  explained.  For  the  ship,  the  locomotive,  the 
steam-engine,  etc.,  exert  their  mighty  energies  not  in  their 
own  behalf,  but  for  some  end  entirely  outside  themselves; 
and  similarly  the  Eternal  Spirit  and  her  typically  feminine 
daughters  always  and  everywhere  have  chiefly  sought  and 
striven  after  not  their  own  comfort,  joy  or  triumph,  but 
after  the  comfort,  joy  and  triumph  of  the  person  or  the 
cause  most  precious  to  them. 

VIII. 

The  function  of  the  Spirit  toward  every  believer  in  Jesus 
is  feminine,  since  that  function  is  peculiarly  the  mother- 
function  of  nourishing,  purifying  and  perfecting  the  re- 
deemed soul  which  is  born  into  eternal  life  by  accepting 
the  proffered  Life  of  the  Son  of  God. 

Throughout  animated  nature  the  male  organism  con- 
tributes one  living  germ  toward  each  individual  life;  the 
female  organism  appropriates  that  germ,  feeds  and  evolves 
it  into  the  destined  offspring,  then  brings  it  to  the  birth 
and  still  thereafter  nourishes  and  cares  for  it  until  it 
reaches  self-sustaining  maturity. 

And  similarly  with  the  human  soul.  If  it  repents  and 
accepts  the  eternal  life  proffered  by  the  Eternal  Son, 
straightway  the  Divine  Maternal  Spirit  begins  to  inspire, 
to  develop  it,  then  to  usher  it  through  baptism  into  the 
Church  and  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  thereafter,  if  it 
remains  faithful,  lovingly  dwelling  with  and  tenderly 
leading  it  toward  the  full  stature  of  the  perfect  humanity 
of  Christ  Jesus,  that  so  it  may  one  day  reign  in  bliss  with 
the  Glorified  Christ  in  heaven. 

And  once  again:  If  there  were  no  other  reason  at  all 
in  Scripture  for  supposing  the  "  Holy  Spirit "  to  be  the 
Divine  Eternal  Mother  of  the  Universe,  would  not  that 


(i(t  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

precious  and  priceless  name  "  Comforter"  under  which  we 
best  love  the  Spirit,  alone  suggest  and  all  but  prove  it — 
for  what  but  human  motherhood  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave  is  the  closest  human  "comforter"  of  this  tragic 
world  ? 

IX. 

Since  time  began  the  mother-sex  has  been  the  chief 
cleanser  of  the  world,  accomplishing  the  daily  never-end- 
ing task  by  the  water  which  washes  out  stains  and  impuri- 
ties, by  the  Ure  which  consumes  what  is  irreclaimable,  or 
by  the  fresh  and  living  breeze  which  blowing  through  the 
house  bears  the  invisible  poison  germs  away. 

And  so  in  the  inspired  Scripture  is  the  Divine  Eternal 
Spirit  identified  with  the  cleansing  "  water  "  and  the  puri- 
fying "  fire "  of  baptismal  regeneration,  and  with  the 
"  mighty  rushing  wind  "  which  sweeps  before  it  all  mist 
and  miasm  and  leaves  behind  it  the  clear  sweet  air  which 
is  man's  breath  of  life  at  every  moment  of  his  existence. 
In  the  Greek  Testament,  in  fact,  the  same  word  "pneurna" 
is  used  to  indicate  both  the  breath  and  the  Divine  Spirit. 


On  the  immortal  Day  of  Pentecost  the  "  Spirit  "  ap- 
peared upon  the  heads  of  the  assembled  disciples  of  both 
sexes  in  the  likeness  of  "  tongues  of  fire/'  so  that  each 
soul  burst  as  it  were  into  flame  and  every  mouth  began 
proclaiming  in  the  language  of  him  to  whom  it  was  speak- 
ing the  new  "  glad  tidings  "  of  God. — But  of  the  two 
halves  of  humanity,  which  is  the  naturally  eloquent — 
which  the  spontaneously  talking  half?  Is  it  not  the  sister 
half? — and  may  we  not  in  these  lambent,  heaven-pointing 
"  tongues  "  find  still  another  confirmation  that  the  Divine 


A'Eir    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  67 

Eternal  Spirit  is  in  its  nature  and  attributes  divinely  and 
absolutely  "  Feminine  "  ? 

XI. 

Consistently  with  the  foregoing  theory  of  the  "Holy 
Ghost "  or  Divine  Spirit  and  therefore  of  the  infinite  dig- 
nity and  preciousness  of  the  Feminine,  the  attitude  of  the 
Redeemer  toward  the  despised  womanhood  of  earth  was 
as  revolutionary  as  his  attitude  toward  the  other  accepted 
standards  of  his  day,  if  not  more  so.  Besides  the  tremen- 
dous initial  honor  of  being  "  born  of  a  woman,"  He  first 
extended  from  manhood  to  womanhood  the  gentle  per- 
sonal courtesy  before  Him  unknown  and  undreamed-of 
whether  by  prince  or  by  peasant.  He  addressed  women 
as  on  the  same  moral  and  intellectual  plane  with  men, 
placed  their  special  virtues  of  purity,  devotion,  humility, 
ardor  and  self-sacrifice  in  the  same  rank  with  the  recog- 
nized manhood  virtues,  found  a  divine  value  in  their 
"  loving  much,"  and  offered  to  every  woman  who  would 
accept  it,  equally  with  every  man,  a  co-partaking  in  his 
own  Eternal  Life. 

Moreover,  He  forbade  the  divorce  of  the  wife  save  on 
account  of  her  own  conjugal  infidelity,  and  thereby  gave 
to  women  for  the  first  time  in  history  a  place  of  their 
very  own  on  God's  wide  earth,  namely,  their  husbands* 
house,  from  which  they  could  not  causelessly  be  ejected 
without  deadliest  sin  on  the  part  of  the  husband.  Think 
of  it ! — that  to  Jesus  the  Christ  does  woman  owe  that 
priceless  institution  of  "  home  "  which  before  Him  her 
brother  man  had  never  conceded  to  her,  but  from  which 
as  from  her  first  firm  foundation  she  has  since  builded 
herself  slowly  up  through  the  ages  and  h'as  brought  her 
sons  with  her;  for  so  fast  as  womanhood  rises,  just  so 


68  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

fast  and  no  faster  is  each  generation  of  manhood  born 
higher  up  and  farther  on ! 

More  tremendous  still,  by  re-enacting  the  first  law  im- 
posed by  God  upon  human  society — "  They  twain  shall  he 
one  iiesh"  Jesus  declared  marriage  to  be  between  two 
and  two  only.  Follows  logically  that  if  a  third  come  in 
it  is  no  longer  "  marriage/'  but  adultery.  Not  bigamy, 
not  polygamy,  not  any  other  infidelity  can  shelter  within 
the  exclusive  relation.  Manhood  equally  with  woman- 
hood was  therefore  bound  over  by  Christ  to  Monogamic 
Marriage. 

XII. 

In  the  closing  book  of  the  Holy  Bible  or  "  Revelation 
of  St.  John  the  Divine  " — is  pictured  "  a  Great  Wonder  in 
Heaven  .  .  a  Woman  clothed  with  the  sun,  and  with  the 
moon  under  her  feet,  and  upon  her  head  a  crown  of 
twelve  stars."  Before  Her  stands  "  a  great  red  Dragon  " 
ready  to  devour  her  "  Man-Child "  so  soon  as  it  shall 
be  born.  But  the  Child  is  "  caught  up  to  Heaven  and 
to  the  Throne  of  God,"  while  the  Mother  remains  on 
earth,  where,  together  with  those  "  who  keep  the  com- 
mandments and  have  the  testimony  of  Jesus  Christ,"  She 
is  "  persecuted  "  and  "  warred  upon  "  by  the  Dragon. 

Shall  not  human  womanhood,  esteemed  by  Christian 
theologians  from  St.  Paul  down  as  hardly  more  than  a 
nature-provision  for  reproduction,  now  find  courage  to 
ask  these  same  theologians:  "WHO  can  this  Heaven- 
Wonder  be  but  the  DIVINE  ETERNAL  FEMININE 
— the  Divine  Eternal  Consort  of  the  Divine  Eternal 
Father— the  Divine  Eternal  Mother  of  that  "Only- 
Begotten  Son  "  Who  on  earth  illustrated  his  own  pre- 
cept— "Except  ye  become  as  little  children  ye  shall  in 
no  wise  enter  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven?" 


CHAPTER   X. 

JESUS    AND   THE    SPIRIT. 

"  Little  children  "  are  taught  and  trained  and  implic- 
itly led  by  Womanhood  in  the  guise  of  their  mothers; 
and  similarly  did  the  Omnipotent  Son  of  God,  in  order  to 
achieve  and  forever  establish  that  Bliss  of  the  Universe 
which  w^e  call  "  Heaven,"  carry  out  absolutely  what  this 
book  assumes  to  have  been  the  counsel  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Feminine  as  adopted  by  the  Almighty  Father  and 
the  Son  before  creation  was; — otherwise  what  means  the 
declaration  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts — "  Not  by  might,  nor  by 
power,  but  by  my  Spirit?" — or  what  meant  the  Apostle 
Paul  by  saying  that  "  through  the  Eternal  Spirit  Christ 
offered  Himself  without  spot  to  God?  "  * 

Alas,  in  her  mission  of  subduing  Deity's  great  enemy, 
this  Pleading,  Persuasive  Spirit  had  thus  far  seemed  ut- 
terly to  fail — for  the  despotisms  of  Asia  and  of  Rome  with 
their  frightful  slaveries  and  cruelties  were  now  completely 
dominating  the  earth.  The  super-subtle  and  far-seeing 
Lucifer  had  comprehended  perfectly  the  purely  Moral 
Force  pitted  against  him,  and  hence  his  deep  tactics  from 
the  Garden  of  Eden  onward  in  influencing  human  man- 
hood to  humiliate,  enslave  and  degrade  human  woman- 
hood. 

He  thus  not  only  struck  back  at  the  very  heart  of  the 
Divine  Eternal  Feminine,  but,  because  enslaved  mothers 

*  Hebrews^  9,  8. 


70  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

can  bring  forth  only  slavish  sons,  the  subjection  of  woman 
to  the  "  I  "  or  Selfhood  of  men  ensured  the  eventual  sub- 
jection of  men  themselves  to  the  same  Demonic  Selfhood 
or  One-Man-Power  which  is  the  Luciferian  Ideal.  Such 
had  at  last  become  the  world-wide  contempt  for  aught 
and  everything  save  martial  strength  and  splendor  and 
success,  that  even  had  the  Divine  Feminine  then  come  to 
dwell  visibly  on  earth  as  Ideal  Woman,  her  exquisite  but 
defenceless  All-Perfection  could  have  made  no  impression 
upon  the  iron-clad  masculinism  of  the  Roman  era. 

But  Triune  Deity  had  only  been  waiting  for  the  "  ful- 
ness of  time "  to  come — in  other  words,  for  Lucifer's 
Law  of  Self  to  have  achieved  its  inevitable  result  of  uni- 
versal and  hopeless  slavery  and  misery,  for  the  Divine 
Omnipotent  Son  to  lay  aside  that  Deity  and  descend  to 
earth  in  human  form,  there  to  "  walk  in  the  Spirit " — to 
"  walk  in  love,"  and  show  convincingly  forth  to  human 
manhood  what  it  was  capable  of  becoming  when  to  its 
own  magnificent  attributes  it  should  add  the  equal  though 
softer  appeal  of  the  Feminine. 

For  when  of  the  master  sex  One  Who  revealed  to  his 
hearers  those  ultimate  truths  of  Deity  which  had  been 
vainly  sought  by  the  best  and  greatest  in  all  ages — Who 
taught  the  law  of  Its  divine  life — Who  swayed  at  will  the 
forces  of  the  universe — Who  by  a  word  called  back  the 
dead  and  Whom  simply  to  behold  was  to  long  to  hail  as 
"  Master,"  *'  Lord  "  and  "  King ;  " — when  this  Supernal 
Personality  from  All-subduing  suddenly  became  All-sub- 
missive— when  He  turned  from  a  world  practically  at 
his  feet  and  abdicating  even  his  human  manhood  allowed 
Himself  like  a  very  woman  to  be  "  crucified  through 
weakness  " — resisting  not  his  enemies — resenting  not 
their   blows,   their   spitting,   their   insults,   their   tortures 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  7 J 

— "  being  made  perfect  through  sufferings  " — pouring  out 
his  blood — giving  everythingy-yielding  even  his  soul — laid 
a  lifeless  victim  in  the  tomb — and  then — within  two  sun- 
risings  quietly  reappearing  in  the  same  Veiled  Omnipo- 
tence as  before,  and  after  brief  sojourn  among  those  who 
adored  Him  ascending  bodily  to  his  Eternal  Home — the 
amazement  that  this  Mightiest  One  should  choose  as  his 
crown  of  special  glory  the  despised  self-sacrificing  virtues 
of  every-day  common  motherhood,  and  as  his  kingly  robe 
of  beauty  the  robe  of  suffering  which  had  been  woman's 
closest  inner  garment  ever  since  her  fall  in  Eden — the  in- 
finite pity  and  wonder  of  it  all  melted  even  human  mascu- 
linism  itself,  and  from  that  crucifixion  hour,  through  the 
lustre  cast  by  Him  upon  the  "  mind  "  and  the  "  works  " 
of  the  Perfect,  Pleading,  Non-resisting  Spirit  hitherto  so 
brutally  thwarted  and  ignored  by  Lucifer  and  his  follow- 
ing— began  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  deep  prophecy — "  // 
/  be  lifted  up  I  will  draw  all  men  unto  Me ! " 

The  visible  Passion  of  the  visible  Christ  upon  the  visible 
Cross  was  the  translation  into  the  terms  of  Finite  Soul, 
human  and  every  other,  of  the  otherwise  inconceivable 
suffering  of  the  Infinite,  Ineffable  Trinity  from  the  non- 
love  of  that  Soul. 

"  Give  me  a  torch,"  cried  Santa  Teresa,  "  that  I  may 
burn  heaven,  and  bring  me  water  that  I  may  drown  hell 
— that  God  may  be  loved  for  Himself  alone !  " 

The  moral  miracle  of  this  union  of  humility  and  power 
in  the  Person  of  the  Divine  Son — the  Heir  of  the  uni- 
verse submitting  to  the  Rebel  of  the  universe — Highest 
Life  plunging  down  to  Deepest  Death  only  to  emerge  self- 
revived,  triumphant  and  bringing  out  with  Him  by  the 
might  of  love  alone  all  who  would  sweep  with  Him  back 
to  the  Plane  of  Heaven — this  Transcending  Beauty  of 


V 

72  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

THE  Redemption  it  is  which  when  fully  apprehended  must 
and  will  complete  the  conquest  of  all  our  still-resisting 
humanity  and  set  its  remaining  self-centred  currents 
rushing  outward  toward  that  One  Name  in  heaven  and 
earth  whereby  men  may  be  saved — the  Name  of  Jesus — 
of  Him  who  both  said  and  lived,  "  Greater  love  hath  no 
man  than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his 
friends." 

To  bestow  new,  pure,  perfect  life — for  Creative  Deity 
what  joy  !  what  triumph  ! 

But  for  Creative  Deity  to  restore  life  destroyed  by  turn- 
ing death  back  into  life — what  agony  !  what  horror ! 

For  this  is  to  demand  that  radiant,  immaculate,  self- 
existent  Being  shall  identify  and  unite  Itself  with  the 
spiritual  decomposition  and  decay  of  which  dead  and 
putrescent  flesh  is  but  the  loathsome  outer  sign,  so  that 
by  closest  contact  of  living  love  the  divine  soul-spark 
may  be  rekindled  and  by  the  divine  energy  the  gan- 
grened soul-veins  transfused  until  their  pulses  beat  again ! 

Could  a  self-sacrifice  so  awful  be  consummated  save 
through  suffering  as  awful  ? 

If  a  glorious  and  beautiful  youth  were  compelled  to 
take  into  his  arms  a  diseased  and  dying  pauper  and  hold 
him  to  his  breast  and  to  his  mouth  until  vitality  returned, 
would  it  not  be  revolt  and  agony  unspeakable  ? 

And  oh,  therefore,  to  the  Divine  Son  was  it  not  the 
merging  and  co-partaking  of  his  living  purity  with  the 
soul-corruption  of  Lucifer's  soul-dead  realm  and  not  the 
physical  tortures  of  the  approaching  cross  which  called 
forth  the  "  strong  crying  "  and  the  "  tears  "  and  the  "  sweat 
which  was  as  it  were  great  drops  of  blood  falling  down 
to  the  ground  ?  " 

To  many,  very  many,  how  hard  and  how  dark  is  the 
saying — "  Without  shedding  of  blood  is  no  remission." 


NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  73 

All  non-Trinitarians  reject  it. — The  enormous  prepon- 
derance of  American  manhood  rejects  it. 

Yet  how  obvious  the  explanation. 

For  the  "Blood  is  the  Life" — that  is,  the  physical  life 
of  the  physical  body,  and  therefore  the  most  vivid  pos- 
sible emblem  of  that  Divine  Life  which  alone  is  or  can 
be  the  Life  of  the  Soul  as  it  is  of  the  whole  organic  crea- 
tion. 

From  that  creation  Lucifer's  Law  of  Self,  commonly 
called  "  sin,"  cuts  off  and  kills  the  soul,  even  as  blood- 
poison  corrupts  and  kills  the  living  limb  upon  the  living 
body. 

But — " /  am  come  that  ye  may  have  life"  declared  the 
Saviour,  "  and  that  ye  may  have  it  infinitely.'' 

It  is  the  perpetual  imparting  of  the  LIFE  of  the  Self- 
existing  Son  of  God  to  the  sin-slain  souls  of  generation 
after  generation  of  those  who  repent — to  yours  also, 
Reader,  and  to  mine,  in  our  turn,  if  we  will  have  it — 
which  constitutes  the  "ATONEMENT." 

"/  have  no  words  wherewith  to  tell 
The  loveliness  of  loving  well!" 


CHAPTER   XI. 

THE    PERFECT. 

"  The  loveliness  of  loving  well  "  the  Divine  Son  had 
shown  forth  on  earth  after  the  Self-abnegating  and  Sac- 
rificial Deity  of  the  Divine  Mother,  as  in  his  miracles  and 
his  offer  of  salvation  He  had  represented  the  Power  and 
the  Life-giving  Deity  of  the  Divine  Father,  and  in 
the  celestial  tenderness  of  his  daily  walk  and  the  celestial 
wisdom  of  his  daily  teachings  and  the  celestial  patience 
of  his  final  suffering  had  exemplified  Them  Both — "  for 
in  Him  dwelt  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily." 

And  having  thus  revealed  the  Perfect  Deity  of  Dual 
Nature,  and  reverently  championed  and  exalted  the  Self- 
defenceless  Feminine  so  disdained  and  persecuted  by 
Lucifer — also  from  His  Cross  having  become  the  Life- 
Restorer  of  all  who  were  dead  through  Lucifer,  He  re- 
turned again  to  the  "  glory  He  had  with  his  Father  be- 
fore the  world  was,"  while  the  Eternal  Spirit  went  back 
to  earth  to  continue  the  moral  struggle  in  which  for  so 
many  tragic  ages  the  Great  Enemy  had  been  the  winner. 

But  not  now  was  the  Invisible  Spirit  here  as  the  "  still 
small  voice  "  of  conscience  and  right  reason  only.  As  a 
"  mighty  rushing  wind  "  of  conviction  to  sweep  away  all 
mists  of  doubt  and  falsehood  did  She  come,  and  as  a 
"  burning  flame "  did  She  descend  into  every  believing 
heart,  refining  its  gold,  consuming  its  dross  and  inspiring 
its  zeal,  to  reach  out  and  enkindle  the  next  heart  and  the 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  75 

next,  and  thus  ever  to  widen  the  joy-circle  of  the  re- 
deemed until  at  last  it  shall  embrace  the  whole  human 
family  and  the  Kingdom  of  the  Father  and  His  Anointed 
be  forever  established  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven — its 
wildernesses  blossom  as  the  rose,  its  swords  be  beaten  into 
ploughshares,  the  Chosen  People  be  restored  to  a  re- 
claimed Palestine  and  a  "  new  "  Jerusalem,  the  world  be 
full  of  the  knowledge  of  God  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea, 
and  every  least  thing  in  it,  even  to  the  "  bells  upon  the 
horses "  be  wholly  and  proudly  and  joyously  dedicated 
"  To  THE  Lord."  * 

When  this  victory  of  Love  over  Self  shall  be  achieved, 
and  the  planet  which  had*  made  Lucifer  its  "  Prince " 
shall  have  restored  itself  to  Deity — what  of  the  "  lost " — 
of  those  whose  unforgivable  sins  against  the  Holy  Spirit 
had  sentenced  them  at  the  Last  Judgement  to  the  loveless 
realm  of  the  loveless  Lucifer — to  that  "  outer  darkness  " 
so  immeasurably  distant  from  the  Universe  of  Stars  that 
no  faintest  ray  therefrom  can  reach  it,  and  where  is  no 
sound  save  "weeping  and  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth?" 

For  when  the  Divine  Feminine  had  done  all  upon  the 
earth  that  She  was  commissioned  to  do — then,  as  foretold, 
had  come  the  "  great  and  terrible  day  of  the  Lord  "  when 
the  Might  and  the  Power  of  Manhood  Deity  in  all  their 
Blazing  Omnipotence  had  succeeded  to  her  Humility, 
her  Patience  and  her  Pleading,  and  in  the  clouds  of 
heaven  the  Eternal  Son  had  appeared  on  the  "  right 
hand "  of  the  Eternal  Father,  then  and  there  to  judge 
both  the  quick  and  the  dead,  and  according  to  the  deeds 
recorded,  at  last  to  send  every  soul  "  to  its  own  place." 

Will  not  that  too-oft  rejected  Spirit  in  whose  cause 
and  vindication  many  are  now  themselves  rejected,  so 
*  Zachariah,  14,  20. 


V 

76  NEW   YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

forever  bear  them  in  her  yearning  love,  that  through  her 
divine  sympathy  and  compassion  "  the  balm,  the  bliss,  the 
beauty  and  the  bloom  "  which  will  stream  forth  from  the 
transfigured  earth  will  in  some  way  be  brought  home  even 
to  them?  Will  they  not  begin  to  ask  themselves,  each 
and  everyone,  yes,  even  to  the  devils  who  from  the  first 
were  devotees  of  Lucifer,  why — rather  than  continue  in 
the  torture  of  unshriven  guilt  and  in  the  vitriolic  burning 
of  remorse  which  is  all  their  following  after  Self  has 
brought  them — they  should  not  even  yet  take  Love 
for  their  Lord  and  seek  to  share  with  their  once-sinning 
but  long-since  saved  and  regenerated  human  brothers  in 
the  Forgiveness  and  the  Life  and  the  Joy  of  their  ever- 
loving  and  merciful  Triune  Creator? 

The  inspired  apostle  has  declared  that  the  last  enemy 
to  be  destroyed  by  the  Eternal  Son  is  "'  Death."  *  May 
we  not  then  hope  that  from  out  their  living  death 
these  "  lost,"  from  the  greater  transgressors  to  the  least, 
will  all  ask  and  receive  pardon,  cleansing,  reconciliation 
and  restoration — imploring  first  the  forgiveness  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  and  obtaining  her  intercession  (since  other- 
wise the  Heaven-Father  and  the  Son  from  loyalty  to  Her 
could  not  give  ear  to  them)  until  finally  the  Head  and 
Front  of  all  their  wickedness — the  great  Self-Worshipper 
of  the  universe  himself — will  be  left  solitary  in  his  Realm 
of  Despair  with  its  ever-agony  of  failure,  its  ever-con- 
sciousness  of  sin,  and  its  memories  of  treacheries,  cruel- 
ties and  depravities  ever  eating  into  his  soul  like  flames? 

But  if  not  even  a  Creator  in  heaven-bliss  could  sup- 
port solitude,  how  much  less  a  "  creature "  in  hell-tor- 
ment! If  the  vast  empire  of  the  stupendous  Lucifer — its 
countless  hosts — shall  have  shrunk  to  himself  alone,  and 
*  /.  Corinthians,  15,  16. 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  77 

his  utter  defeat  have  come  through  that  giving  everything 
by  the  Heaven-Son  and  his  believers  which  Lucifer  had 
so  scorned  in  his  own  conduct  of  Hfe,  will  he  not  then 
personally  realize  that  of  which  he  was  forewarned — That 
on  the  Plane  of  Cau«;e  and  Effect  and  with  equal  freedom 
of  action  with  Deity,  he  would  be  unable  to  maintain  his 
Principle  of  Self  as  against  Deity's  Principle  of  Love — 
and  this  because  so  soon  as  the  very  weakest  of  his  sub- 
jects, human  womanhood,  had  been  given  something* 
above  itself  to  love,  it  had  begun  to  prove  stronger  than 
him  the  strongest,  and  had  eventually  won  away  from 
him  his  human  following — thereby  demonstrating  to  him 
what  from  his  first  doubtings  the  Eternal  Spirit  had 
striven  to  show  him, — that  he  should  from  the  beginning 
have  trusted  in  love  and  not  strength,  because  love  is 
the  soul  of  strength? 

And  oh — may  we  not  then  further  hope  that  shame  at 
his  own  intellectual  bhndness,  and  horror  at  the  mad 
wickedness  of  selfhood  which  could  wilfully  inflict  such 
immeasurable  suffering  not  only  upon  his  fellow-beings 
but  upon  All-loving  Deity,  will  crumble  his  towering 
pride,  his  adamantine  will,  into  the  dust — that  his  mighty 
nature  will  at  last  abandon  itself  to  the  "  Thou  "  which 
for  so' long  had  been  knocking  at  his  heart — so  that  in 
the  face  of  the  onlooking  universe  he  will  beseech  the 
Heaven-Mother  Whom  he  had  blasphemed,  to  go  with 
him  to  the  Heaven-Son  Whom  he  had  crucified  and  plead 
that  the  soul-life  he  had  forfeited  might  be  vouchsafed  to 
him  again,  and  that  the  Heaven-Father  Whom  he  had 
defied  would  receive  back  his  now  humbled  and  repenting 
Prodigal  and  thus  "  GOD  "  again  be  "  ALL  in  ALL."  * 

With   Lucifer   in   the   agony   of  contrition   before   the 
*  /.  Corinthians,  15,  28. 


78  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Heaven-Father  and  the  Son — the  Heaven-Mother  at  his 
side  in  mute  appeal,  the  assembled  Universe  of  Souls 
spectators  of  the  tremendous  surrender,  and  at  the  scene 
the  very  suns  and  planets  suspending  in  their  courses — 
will  not  then  befall  the  foretold  "  silence  in  heaven " 
which  will  announce  to  every  heart  that  the  Crisis  of 
Creation  is  Here? 

At  the  unspoken  prayer  of  the  Heaven-Mother  will 
^he  Heaven-Son  descend  from  beside  His  Father  and 
place  a  nail-pierced  hand  upon  the  prostrate  head  of  him 
who,  from  the  Archangel  of  glory  and  beauty  transcend- 
ing, has  through  the  selfness  and  soul-decay  of  ages 
become  the  hideous,  appalling  Fiend  whose  very  presence 
is  a  horror  and  an  infamy? 

With  the  first  contact  of  that  Living  Touch  will  the 
consuming  torture  of  the  burning  mind  allay,  the  sobs  of 
the  bursting  heart  begin  to  soothe,  and  as  the  Self-Exist- 
ing One,  once  more  the  Crucificial  Sacrifice,  sends  his  Im- 
maculate Life  into  the  foul  and  fathomless  corruption 
of  the  Luciferian  Death,  while  the  motionless  universe 
looks  on  and  the  Heaven-Father  and  the  Heaven-Mother 
agonize  in  the  final,  supremest  agony  of  their  Redeemer- 
Son — will  that  all-revolting  form  slowly  resolve  into  a 
faint  chrysalis  of  light,  then  softly  shape  into  the  old 
remembered  guise  of  magnificence  and  might — save  that 
the  dazzling  pinions,  crossing  above  the  once  haughty 
head,  close-veil  that  head  now  prone  '*  in  dust "  before 
its  Saviour? 

And  at  length  will  that  Saviour  sigh  and  gently  say — 
"Arise,  my  own  Brother,  and  from  henceforth  be  our 
Father's  '  Light-bearer  '  indeed  ?  " 

And  will  the  forgiven  Archangel  lift  himself  only  to  his 
knees,  and  in  the  sight  and  hearing  of  all  Heaven  sob 


NEIV    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  79 

again  and  again  before  Him — "  My  Lord  and  my  God — 
my  Lord  and  my  God?  " 

And  then,  like  the  father  in  the  Saviour's  own  blessed 
parable,  will  the  Heaven-Father  raise  the  broken-hearted 
one  and  "  fall  upon  his  neck  and  kiss  him  "  and  in  glad- 
ness and  tenderness  immeasurable  cry  to  the  surrounding 
universe  " — This  our  son  who  was  dead  is  alive  again! 
He  was  lost  and  is  found f" 

And  will  that  Heaven-Father  then  ask  for  him .  from 
the  Heaven-Mother  her  "  best  robe  " — the  priceless  robe 
that  only  She  can  weave — for  the  Purity  which  is  Deity 
is  its  warp  and  the  Humility  which  is  Herself  is  its 
woof,  and  its  divine,  invisible  tissue  arrays  those  who 
wear  it  in  that  mystery  of  the  Ideal  and  that  grace  of  the 
Ineffable  in  quest  of  which  the  soul  may  roam  and  search 
the  universe  and  without  "  the  Spirit "  can  never  find  ? 

And  with  the  last  pang  of  pain — the  last  sob  of  sorrow 
— the  last  discord  of  "  self "  in  the  Celestial  Harmony 
thus  quivered  away  into  eternity — will  the  whole  Gamut 
of  Creation,  all  its  Stars  and  all  its  Souls,  burst  into  one 
rapt,  exultant,  never-ending,  ever-changing  Symphony 
OF  Joy — because  the  vast  Cosmic  Serpent  which  had  sought 
to  crush  the  Heaven-Rose  of  Happiness  in  his  terrific 
folds  is  now  and  forevermore  the  adoring,  encircling 
Guardian  of  that  Rose ! — because  the  Arch-Deceiver  of 
the  Universe  who  in  his  glorious  first  estate  was  its 
intellectual  Light-bearer  is  now  transfigured  to  its  more 
glorious  moral  Light-bearer — to  a  "  Lucifer  "  indeed  who 
as  a  blazing  ocean-beacon  upon  the  Rock  of  Ages  will 
to  all  eternity  warn  all  created  souls  and  all  souls  to  be 
created  from  adventuring  their  finite  argosies  against  that 
Infinite,  Immutable,  Inscrutable  Supremacy  which  is 
"  Deity  "  through  being  "  Love  "  ? 


80  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY, 

When  the  "  plan,  the  strange  plan "  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Spirit  together  with  the  "  act,  the  strange  act "  of 
the  Divine  Eternal  Son  have  thus  done  their  perfect 
work  and  achieved  their  divine  ends  by  destroying  Death 
and  restoring,  **  clothed. and  in  their  right  mind"  to  their 
Father's  House  all  the  once  deceived  and  dying  souls 
of  the  universe— then  will  that  ALMIGHTY  FATHER, 
the  GLORIFIER,  arise  in  the  creative  omnipotence  from 
which  He  had  "  rested "  throughout  the  Luciferian  era, 
and  before  the  once-denying  Lucifer  and  the  whole  as- 
semblage of  witnessing  Intelligences  will  He  with  the 
Almighty  Son  bring  into  being  "  the  new  heavens  and 
the  new  earth  "  which  from  the  beginning  were  included 
in  the  Triune  Immeasurable  Design? 

For  in  accordance  with  that  infinite  preference  of  love 
which  subsists  between  the  several  Persons  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Godhead — in  the  long  conflict  of  the  Heaven- 
Mother  and  the  Son  with  the  Heaven-Enemy,  had  not  the 
Heaven-Father  remained  passively  suffering  with,  rather 
than  actively  aiding  Them,  in  order  that  They  might  fully 
demonstrate  the  equal  omnipotence  of  Sacrificial  with 
Creative  Deity  and,  because  the  glory  of  the  triumph  must 
chiefly  remain  with  Them,  might  thereby  attain  to  an 
adoration  throughout  the  universe  equal  to  His  Own? 

Last  of  all — as  the  zenith-crown  of  the  re-union  and 
reconciliation  of  Creator  and  Created — will  there  not  be 
celebrated  that  promised  "  Marriage  of  the  Lamb  "* 
whereat  the  bliss  alike  of  Deity  and  of  the  Universe  is 
to  culminate  and  overflow  in  ecstasy  f 

"The  Bride— the  Lamb's  Wife"— thdit  mysterious 
''King's  Daughter  Who  is  All-Glorious  within — whose 
clothing  is  of  wrought  gold; 

"  Who  will  he  brought  unto  the  King  in  raiment  of 
*  Revelation,  19,  7,  9  and  21, 9. 


NEIV    YORK':    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  8 1 

needlework — all  the  virgins  that  he  her  fellows  hearing 
her  company; 

"  Who  with  joy  and  gladness  shall  he  hrought  and  shall 
enter  into  the  King's  palace "  * 

Who  is  She? 

Is  She  "  The  Holy  City,  New  Jerusalem,"  which  the  Vi- 
sionist  John  saw  "  coming  down  from  God  out  of  heaven, 
prepared  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  husband?  " 

Is  She  "  The  Church  "  or  Whole  Company  of  the  Re- 
deemed— as  taught  by  the  apostle  Paul? 

Or  is  She  perhaps  some  Ineffable  One,  far,  far  with- 
drawn and  waiting  within  the  impenetrable  veils  of  Self- 
existing  Being  until  her  Eternal  Bridegroom  shall  have 
"  put  down  "  Death  and  Hell  and  restored  a  Universal 
Heaven  ? 

Whosoever  and  Whatsoever  She  is — the  closing  words 
of  her  Divine  Betrothed  in  his  Revelation  to  the  world 
He  came  to  save  are: 

"  /  Jesus  am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Beginning  and  the 
End,  the  First  and  the  Last. 

"And  the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say  'Come!*  And 
let  him  that  heareth  say  'Come!'  And  let  him  that  is 
athirst,  come!  And  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the 
Water  of  Life  freely !  " 

Yes — to  the  infinite  persuasiveness  of  his  death  upon 
the  cross  for  our  Lucifer-led,  world-besotted  humanity — 
the  Divine  Son  adds  one  last  supreme  plea — "  not  only  I, 
but  my  Heaven-Mother,  and  not  only  my  Heaven-Mother 
but  my  Heaven-Bride — They  Both  invite  you  all,  every- 
body, to  'come'  and  share  MY  'Life'  and  OUR  Heaven- 
Bliss!" 

Oh,  shall  this  transcending  invitation  of  the  Divine 
*  Psalm  45,  13,  14,  15. 


82  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Eternal  Feminine  on  behalf  of  the  Divine  and  Only 
Son  be  disregarded  by  you,  Reader,  or  by  me? 

Shall  we  not  rather  cry  with  the  beloved  Visionist — 
"Surely  we  come  quickly!"  and  thus  help  to  hasten  the 
day  when  "  all "  shall  come,  so  that  the  Bridegroom 
Himself  can  come  to  his  own  Bridal? 

"Amen.    Even  so,  come,  Lord  Jesus!" 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  "  FOURTH  "   GOSPEL 

BiBLiciSTS  have  thus  far  been  at  a  loss  to  account  for 
the  striking  contrast  between  the  Gospel  according  to  St. 
John  and  the  other  Three. 

But  this  is  only  another  of  the  innumerable  instances 
of  men  striving  in  vain  to  grasp  and  interpret  human 
phenomena  while  absolutely  ignoring  the  agency  of  any 
sex  save  their  own. 

From  his  cross  of  agony  Jesus  the  Redeemer  looked 
down  upon  his  earth-mother  Mary  and  upon  his  disciple 
John  and  said  to  the  former — "Behold  thy  son!"  and  to 
the  latter — "  Behold  thy  mother!  "  "  And  from  that  hour 
that  disciple  took  her  unto  his  own  home." 

Now  what  woman  that  ever  lived  or  will  live  had,  or 
can  have,  an  education  comparable  to  that  of  the  Mary- 
mother  who  dwelt  for  thirty  years  beneath  the  same  roof 
with  the  Omnipotent  Son  of  Creative  Deity  in  his  human 
guise  of  "  Jesus  of  Nazareth,"  and  who  kept  all  that  she 
saw  and  heard  from  Him  "in  her  heart?" 

When  a  youth  has  graduated  from  a  college  where  for 
three  or  four  years  he  has  recited  two  or  three  times  a 
day  to  learned  men — he  is  called  an  "educated"  man. 

Yet  the  twelve  disciples  of  Jesus  lived  for  two  or  three 
years  in  daily  and  hourly  companionship  with  this  Super- 
human Personality,  and  because  when  He  "  called  "  them 
they  were  but  uninstructed  fishermen,  to  this  day  they 


84  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

are  thought  of  and  talked  of  as  "  unlearned  "  and  "  igno- 
rant "  persons ! 

Similarly  has  it  never  been  suggested  (so  far  as  known 
to  the  writer)  that  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  John  was 
doubtless  the  joint  work  of  the  "  beloved  disciple "  and 
the  uniquely  taught  and  illuminated  Mary-mother  whom 
he  was  sheltering  in  his  "  own  home," 

Of  the  graciousness  of  Jesus  toward  human  womanhood 
— of  the  sympathy  of  Jesus  for  human  womanhood  how 
much  less  should  we  know  were  there  no  "  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  St.  John  !  " 

Of  the  personality  and  sphere  of  the  Divine  Eternal 
Spirit  how  dim  and  nebulous  would  be  our  conception 
were  it  not  for  the  glimpses  behind  the  veil  of  Her  Holy 
of  Holies  as  vouchsafed  by  this  priceless  Gospel? 

Is  it  at  all  probable  that  St.  John  compiled  this  so  sweet 
and  strange  Memorial  of  his  Divine  Lord  without  con- 
stant consultation  with  that  earthly  mother  who  had 
studied  and  worshipped  Him  from  his  human  birth  and 
even  before  that  birth  ? 

It  is  not  only  not  probable;  simply,  it  is  not  possible — 
and  accordingly  the  "  feminine  "  mind  and  heart  therein 
betray  themselves  from  one  end  of  its  divine,  appealing 
pages  to  the  other. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


THE   AUTHOR  S   APOLOGY. 


The  famous  Darwin  once  said  that  "humanity  can  no 
more  comprehend  Deity  than  the  dog  can  comprehend 
the  dog-star." 

But  the  Scriptures  which  we  Christians  hold  by  and 
swear  to  as  the  deliberate  Self-revelation  of  God  to  man 
declare  to  us  in  their  opening  chapter  that  God  said — 
"Let  us  make  man  in  our  on'n  image  and  after  our  like- 
ness"— which  is  nothing  else  than  to  say  that  the  Triune 
Wills  Which  are  Creative  Omnipotence  chose  to  mirror 
Themselves  in  a  thinking  and  feeling  and  achieving  race 
which  should  live  and  move  and  have  its  being  on  this 
earth  as  "  male  and  female,"  otherwise  "  man  and 
woman,"  and  resultantly  as  "  husband  and  wife,"  as 
"  father  and  mother,"  as  "  brother  and  sister." 

Which  shall  we  believe — Darwin  or  the  Bible? 

The  best  definition  of  faith  the  writer  has  ever  seen  is 
that  of  the  Christian  (to  her  unknown)  who  said,  *'  Faith 
is  not  sense — nor  reason — but  the  simple  taking  of  God 
at  his  word." 

The  foregoing  pages  are  but  an  attempt  by  "  taking  God 
at  his  word  "  to  show  that  this  "  pure  word  "  of  God  does 
not,  as  do  our  human  brothers,  hold  up  to  woman's  wor- 
ship a  ruthless  Male  Supremacy  Who  invented  the  almost 
impossible  relation  of  the  sexes  and  then  placed  upon  the 
weaker  of  the  two  nearly  all  of  its  burden  and  quite  all 


86  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

of  its  agony,  humiliation  and  shame — ^but  that  its  Divine 
Glad-Tidings  console,  inspire,  and  exalt  our  dual  hu- 
manity by  revealing  an  Infinite  Dual  Parenthood  That 
fashioned  man  and  woman  in  its  own  dual  image  in  order 
that  as  the  objective  microcosm  of  Dual  Deity,  these 
might  demonstrate  his  own  futility  to  the  merciless 
"male"  Lucifer  whose  egoist,  heaven-storming  ambition 
was  determined  to  dominate  that  macrocosm  of  Dual 
Deity  which  is  the  whole  objective  universe. 

Can  we  "  by  searching  find  out  God "  when  "  heaven 
and  the  heaven  of  heavens  can  not  contain  Him  ?  " 

Nay,  no  more  than  a  tiny  water-sphere  of  dew  can  en- 
close the  awful  fire-sphere  of  the  sun ! 

Yet  a  drop  of  dew,  if  perfectly  transparent,  can  reject 
the  sun. 

And  so  may  our  limited  humanity,  simply  by  "  taking 
God  at  his  word,"  "  feel  after  Him  and  find  Him." 

How  in  its  deepest  depth  the  human  heart  has  ever 
yearned  after  the  Dual  Deity  so  persistently  hidden  from 
it  by  the  co-working  masculinism  of  earth  and  hell,  let 
the  ancient  mythologies  of  Egypt,  of  India,  of  Greece,  of 
Rome — let  the  impassioned  worship  of  the  Madonna-Mary 
by  the  Greek  and  Roman  Catholicisms  for  the  last  fifteen 
hundred  years — nay,  let  the  prayers  to  "  Our  Father  and 
Mother  in  Heaven,"  as  even  now  being  offered  by  the 
Unitarian  and  also  the  Christian  Science  denominations — 
bear  witness;  — and  here  I  think  that  I  ought,  even  at  the 
risk  of  appearing  egotistic,  to  state  how  I  myself  came 
to  believe  that  the  Divine  Eternal  "  Spirit  "  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  is  the  Divine  Eternal  Feminine  of  Deity. 

A  clergyman's  unmarried  daughter — one  summer  Sun- 
day afternoon  in  my  twenty-fourth  year  I  read  a  sermon 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  87 

by  the  famous  Frederick  W. 'Robertson  of  the  Church  of 
England  upon  the  Virgin  Mary. 

The  great  preacher  said  that  since  all  ancient  religions 
save  the  Jewish  included  and  worshipped  female  deities, 
so  great  was  the  loss  of  these  intimate  and  beloved  god- 
desses to  the  pagan  converts,  that,  as  time  went  on  and 
the  Church  got  farther  away  from  the  era  of  the  apostles 
and  their  teachings,  the  Virgin  Mary  was  gradually 
exalted  to  the  pedestal  left  vacant  by  the  acceptance  of 
the  Male  Trinity  of  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost  as 
the  Only  True  God. 

But,  so  Mr.  Robertson  argued,  this  devotion  of  both 
the  Greek  Catholic  and  the  Roman  Catholic  Churches  to 
"Mary"  as  the  "Mother  of  God,"  the  "Queen  of  Heaven," 
"  Our  Blessed  Lady,"  etc.  etc.,  had  resulted  from  the 
failure  to  realize  that  the  Second  Person  of  the  Divine 
Trinity  or  "  Only  Son  " — in  his  incarnation  as  "  Jesus  the 
Christ "  was  complete  and  perfect  humanity — was  perfect 
man  and  perfect  woman  in  one,  and  therefore,  when  the 
Protestant  Christian  feels  the  need  and  the  yearning  that 
so  many  do  for  an  element  in  Deity  even  more  tender, 
gracious  and  indulgent  than  the  All-Loving  Saviour  Him- 
self, that  Protestant  should  turn  to  and  dwell  upon  the 
feminine  side  of  His  Infinite  Nature  and  find  therein  the 
comfort  and  consolation  that  through  so  many  centuries 
the  devout  Catholic  has  realised  from  his  love  and  con- 
fidence in  the  Virgin  Mary. 

Closing  the  volume  I  objected  to  myself — "  But  the 
Scripture  tells  us  that  Jesus  *  came  in  likeness  of  men ' 
and  was  *  tempted  in  all  points  as  a  man.'  Now  in  every 
living  organism  the  spirit  or  soul  must  come  first,  and 
must  shape  the  body  as  the  expression  of  itself.  The 
soul  of  Jesus  clothed  itself  in  a  male  body;  therefore  at 


88  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  core,  that  soul,  let  its  lo've,  tenderness  and  gentleness 
be  what  it  would,  must  have  been  the  firm,  immovable, 
law-giving,  law-executing  *  male '  soul ;  its  nature,  its 
quintessence  could  not  have  been  equally  '  female,'  and 
therefore  Mr.  Robertson's  theory  does  not  meet  the  diffi- 
culty." 

At  that  moment  darted  into  my  mind  like  a  ray  of 
light  the  words  of  Jesus  when  promising  to  his  disciples 
on  the  night  of  His  betrayal  the  "  Holy  Ghost  the  Com- 
forter," namely,  "He  shall  not  speak  of  Himself,"  and, 
"" He  shall  glorify  Me" — just  those  words  and  those  alone. 
Came  then  the  thought :  "  But  that  is  like  a  woman — for 
women  as  I  know  them  are  always  talking  of  and  quoting 
their  husbands  and  their  fathers;  they  don't  exalt,  they 
don't  strive  for  themselves  and  in  all  history  they  never 
have.*  Can  it  be  that  the  '  Holy  Spirit '  is  that  Fem- 
inine in  Deity  of  Which,  though  we  women  need  Her  so 
sorely,  the  Bible  seems  to  give  no  assurance  ?  " 

I  lost  no  time  in  looking  op  the  chief  passages  in  Scrip- 
ture which  mentioned  "  the  Spirit "  and  without  exception 
these  seemed  to  me  then,  as  now,  to  confirm  the  reality 
of  this  infinite  exaltation  of  my  sex  which  like  a  sun 
had  so  suddenly  unveiled  and  flooded  with  glory  and  with 
joy  the  hitherto  hopeless  woman-world — that  despised 
and  flouted  sub-world  into  which  woman  had  been  herded 
and  kept  as  a  function  merely — as  the  breeder  which 
President  Roosevelt,  the  Political  Head  of  these  United 
States,  and  also  President  Eliot  of  Harvard,  their  Uni- 
versity Head,   even   to-day  would   fain   have   her  chiefly 

*  Remember  that  this  was  in  1859,  when  the  woman  suffrage  move- 
ment was  in  its  obscure  and  feeble  infancy;  and  even  yet,  how  few 
women  are  agitating  for  the  "manhood  ballot"  compared  with  the  multi- 
milliotas  who  are  passive  and  contented  without  it! 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  89 

consider  herself!  In  an  old  commentary  I  even  found 
that  among  the  early  Greek  Christians  were  those  who 
held  that  the  "  Spirit "  was  the  Mother  of  the  Universe— 
the  Maternal  Principle,  etc.,  etc. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  now  been  vouchsafed  the 
answer  to  my  long-offered  prayer  on  behalf  of  outcast 
womanhood,*  and  that  here  was  THE  truth  which  when 
accepted  must  and  would  cure,  by  preventing,  the 
so-called  "  necessary  "  Social  Evil — for  how  could  man- 
hood dare  continue  the  profanation  of  the  sex  which, 
equally  with  its  own,  has  its  Supernal  Archetype  in  the 
Godhead  Itself? 

Nevertheless,  the  chequered  years  rolled  on  and  no  way 
suggested  itself  of  presenting  the  stupendous  dogma  pos- 
sessing me  until  it  came  to  me  to  do  so  in  this  book 
of  warning  against  the  Masculinism  and  Materialism 
which,  radiating  from  the  city  of  New  York  as  their 
vital  American  centre,  are  more  and  more  penetrating 
and  subduing  our  divinely-born  Republic  to  their  Lu- 
ciferian  ends. 

In  1884  I  went  to  live  in  New  York  in  order  to  study 
the  city  at  first-hand,  and  from  about  1892 — very  slowly, 
and  with  pauses  of  years  between,  these  imperfect 
pages  have  come  from  my  protesting  brain  and  in  in- 
stalments have  been  transferred  to  the  "  plates ;  "  for  it  is 
a  bitter  thing  to  have  to  pass  unfavorable  judgment  upc.i 
one's  fellow-mortals,  and  a  fearful  one — in  striving  to 
formulate  a  perfect  and  consistent  theory  of  Creator  and 
Created — to  have  to  search  into  the  BEING  and  the 
PURPOSES  of  the  LIVING  GOD. 

•  See  Prelude  to  Part  II. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


PROCLAMATION. 


"  When  the  Lord  gives  the  word,  great  will  be  the  company  of 
wDmen  to  publish  it. 

"  Kings  with  their  armies  will  flee  apace,  and  the  women  of  the 
household  will  divide  the  spoil. 

"  Though  they  have  lived  amid  the  grime  of  the  cooking  pots, 
they  shall  become  as  the  wings  of  a  dove  that  is  covered  with  silver 
wings  and  her  feathers  like  gold. 

"  Yea,  when  the  Almighty  Himself  scatters  the  kings  for  their  sake, 
then  will  they  be  esteemed  white  as  the  snow  of  Mount  Salmon."  * 

And  now — if  the  foregoing  Gospel  according  to  Woman- 
hood as  read  "  between  the  lines  "  of  the  Inspired  Man- 
hood Gospels  be  indeed  the  reading  of  the  "  Spirit "  and 
not  mere  human  delusion — then  must  all  Christian  be- 
lievers, and  especially  all  Christian  women,  regardless 
equally  of  skepticism,  ridicule  or  brow-beating,  proclaim 
everywhere  the  infinitely  joyous  thesis  of  these  pages, 
namely — That  the  Perfect  Deity  revealed  in  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  is  a  Divine  Eternal  Trinity  of  Father,  Mother 
and  Only  Son — Co-Equal  and  Co-Powerful — Omnipotent, 
Omniscient,  Omnipresent — Radiant  in  Infinite  Love,  in 
Perfect  Beauty,  in  Changeless  Youth — existing  solely  for 
Happiness  and  shrinking  from  no  self-abnegation  nor  self- 
sacrifice  to  achieve  Happiness — Three  Divine  Natures, 
Each  with  a  Personality  and  a  Mission  peculiarly  Its  Own 

*  Paraphrased  from  Psalm  68,  11-14 — and  is  it  not  significant  to  note 
that  the  translators  of  the  Authorized  Version  left  out  the  word 
"women"  in  verse  II?  Like  St.  Paul,  they  had  no  mind  to  encourage 
women    preachers! 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  9^ 

— the  Father  the  Giver  of  original  life,  the  Son  the 
Restorer  of  life  destroyed,  the  Mother  the  Nourisher  of  all 
life,  yet  All  living  in  every  life  and  All  absolutely  AT 
ONE  because  All  are  infinitely  v^ise  and  so  They  can  not 
differ,  and  All  are  infinitely  loving  and  so  They  can  feel  no 
jealousy,  but  Each  forever  works  for  and  with  the  Other 
Twain  and  forever  seeks  to  exalt  Them  before  Itself. 

"  Perfect "  love  where  there  is  either  inferiority  or  in- 
constancy being  impossible — follows  from  this  Fatherhood 
and  Motherhood  in  Deity  that  SEX  IS  THE  EQUA- 
TION OF  SELF-EXISTING  BEING,  and  therefore  that 

Sex  is  the  Great  Equation  of  the  Objective  Uni- 
verse. 

Its  Plane  the  Spiritual  and  Eternal  and  not  the 
material   and  temporal; 

And  MoNOGAMic  Marriage  its  Heaven-Law: — 

That  upon  earth  was  divinely  intended  the  universal 
social,  industrial  and  political  Brotherhood  and  Sister- 
hood of  the  Race  whose  first  parents  were  created  "  male 
and  female  "  by  the  Eternally  Wedded  Infinities  Who  said 
to  Each  Other — "  Let  Us  make  humanity  in  Our  Image 
and  after  Our  likeness  " : — 

That  the  equi-dignity,  equi-freedom  and  equi-devotion 
of  this  Ineffable  Union  Eternal  In  The  Heavens  were 
meant  to  reign  equally  in  the  human  unions  of  earth  as 
they  already  do  and  must  in  every  true  sex-affinity 
throughout  that  Universe  of  Spheres  and  Souls  of  which 
the  Divine  Father,  Mother  and  Only  Son  are  the 
Alpha  and  Omega — They  the  Authors  and  Nourish- 
ers — They  the  Redeemers,  the  Perfecters  and  the 
GLORIFIERS:— 


92  NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

That  the  inequality  in  the  marriage  relation  as  existing 
all  over  the  world  and  embodied  in  the  marriage  ritual 
of  even  Christian  nations,  like  all  adult  subjection  and 
slavery  of  every  degree,  v^as  originally  the  result  and  is 
the  sign  of  Sin,  and  remains  the  direct  inspiration  of  the 
Father  of  Sin: — 

That  therefore,  together  with  Sin  and  Satan,  it  should 
now  be  disowned  and  repudiated  by  every  God-obeying 
mind  and  that  from  thenceforward  all  Christian  parents 
should  teach  their  sons  from  infancy  itself,  that  before  as 
lovers  they  seek  to  approach  the  marriage-altar,  thereby  to 
enter  another's  life  and  through  "  life  kindling  upon  life  " 
to  bring  into  being  living  souls — their  one  principle  and 
pledge  toward  this  deepest  and  divinest  of  all  relations 
should  be — "  Love — the  Giving  Everything — the 
Thou  "  :— 

That  the  Profanation  of  Human  Womanhood,  together 
with  the  Licentiousness  of  Human  Manhood  which  is  its 
moving  cause,  must  now  cease  and  disappear  from  the 
earth : — 

That  the  terms  "  bigamy  "  and  "  polygamy  "  as  meaning 
two  or  more  wives  to  one  man  must  be  blotted  from  the 
language  and  from  the  statute  books,  because  there  is 
and  can  be  only  one  "  wife  " — the  monogamic  wife — tq 
any  husband;  unfaithfulness  to  her  is  only  and  simply 
"  adultery,"  and  as  such  must  be  branded,  legislated-for 
and  punished;  and  even  still  more  impossible  is  it  for  a 
woman  to  be  a  "  bigamist,"  i.e.,  a  "  wife  "  to  two  or  more 
husbands : — 

That  Creative  Deity  having  entrusted  to  monogamic 
marriage  the  transmission  Of  the  human  soul,  adultery  is 


NEW    YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  93 

not  only  the  violation  of  the  most  intimate  and  solemn 
contract  of  the  universe,  but  is  also  the  betrayal  and  cor- 
ruption of  the  source  of  life  itself — consequently  is  treason 
to  the  unborn,  to  the  future  offspring  of  the  unborn,  to 
society,  and  to  the  race.  Therefore  its  proper  penalty  is 
not  divorce,  but  death  or  prisoning  for  life.  The  Lord 
Christ  did  not  avert  the  stoning  of  the  adulteress  because 
she  did  not  deserve  it,  but  because  her  would-be  execution- 
ers had  all  been  guilty  of  similar  sin : — 

That  "  marriage "  being  absolutely  and  only  between 
two,  the  intrusion  of  a  third  instantly  destroys  it;  there- 
fore, the  man  or  woman  whose  wedded  partner  is  unfaith- 
ful, by  that  fact  becomes  instantly  and  absolutely  freed 
from  the  marriage  bond,  and,  so  soon  as  the  authorized 
court  proclaims  the  same  to  society,  is  as  righteously  en- 
titled to  contract  another  marriage  as  though  the  first 
had  never  existed — all  the  ministers  of  the  so-called 
"  apostolic  succession  "  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding: — 

That  seduction  of  the  innocent  where  not  repaired  by 
honorable  marriage,  should  outlaw  the  seducer  and  give 
any  relative  of  the  victim  the  right  to  shoot  him  on  sight 
without  blood-guiltiness : — 

.  That  profane  assault  upon  womanhood,  girlhood  or 
childhood  is  the  special  crime  of  War,  and  should  be 
avenged  by  death  at  the  hands  of  the  local  militia  so  soon 
as  the  officers  of  the  militia  can  summon  a  court-martial, 
weigh  the  evidence  and  sentence  the  ravisher;  and  this 
for  the  reason  that  the  Militia  Service  exists  for  the  Na- 
tional Defence,  and  the  first  duty  of  National  Manhood  is 
the  assurance  to  every  woman  of  that  foundation  right 
whose  forcible  violation  far  out-classes  her  murder — 
namely,  her  right  to  her  own  person: — 


V 

94  NEW   YORK:    A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

That  the  unforgivable  degenerates  now  so  often  brought 
before  the  courts  for  depraving  children,  and  equally  all 
men  and  vi^omen  who  as  procurers  and  procuresses  traffic 
in  girlhood  and  womanhood — are  guilty  of  the  highest 
crime  possible  to  humanity  against  humanity,  and  should 
upon  conviction  be  swiftly  executed  without  appeal: — 

That  should  the  aforesaid  penalties  for  the  aforesaid 
crimes  be  deemed  too  severe,  the  writer  can  only  refer  the 
reader  to  the  Eternal  Source  and  Standard  of  Theistic 
Morals,  namely,  the  Bible,  in  a  topical  edition  of  which 
may  be  found  twenty-three  and  a  quarter  pages  of  de- 
nunciations and  warnings  against  licentiousness  and  adul- 
tery, and  but  one  and  a  third  similar  pages  against  the 
vice  of  intemperance — quite  sufficient,  so  it  would  seem, 
to  prove  which  of  these  two  sins  in  the  Divine  Mind  is 
the  more  heinous: — 

That  parents,  and  especially  fathers,  should  now  every- 
where awake  to  the  supreme  duty  of  early  training  their 
little  sons  to  be  pure  and  chaste  in  thought,  word  and 
deed,  and,  in  the  words  of  the  noble  Richmond  Pearson 
Hobson,  ''  to  believe  that  chivalry  and  gallantry  toivard 
women  is  a  part  of  the  Plan  of  Creation,  and  that  every 
man  in  the  presence  of  every  woman  in  any  circumstances 
should  act  the  part  of  a  cavalier  and  a  knight "  * ; — 

That  parents  everywhere  should  from  this  onward 
impress  it  upon  their  daughters  that  if  as  maidens 
they  find  themselves  ruined  or  violated,  or  as  wives  un- 
faithful to  their  husbands,  they  should  courageously  de- 
stroy their  desecrated  bodies  and  go  before  their  Divine 
Judge  and  ask  Him  to  assign  their  souls  to  such  place 
as   He   shall   choose — because   to   remain   in   this   world 

*  Address  at  the  obsequies  of  Admiral  Phillips. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  95 

will  and  must  only  disgrace  their  families,  their  sex,  and 
their  country,  and  help  to  undermine  society.  Save  a 
prison,  there  is  absolutely  no  spot  on  earth  for  the  dese- 
crated woman.  Why  should  she  not  be  at  least  as  noble 
as  the  common  soldier  in  all  ages  and  die  for  her  friends, 
her  country  and  her  sex  as  the  one  thing  she  can  do  for 
them — yea,  hide  herself  in  the  mercies  of  the  Divine  Eter- 
nal Trinity  whose  Three-Fold  Love  will  pity,  cleanse  and 
in  its  own  good  time  restore  her?  For — and  ponder  it 
well,  O  American  Womanhood,  so  shameful  and  so  hor- 
rible a  proportion  of  whose  daughters  is  perpetually  de- 
voted to  profanation — in  the  Bible  there  is  no  command 
against  suicide. 

That  the  legislatures  of  the  United  States  must  now  see 
to  it  that  throughout  this  land  the  Stage  and  the  Studio 
shall  cease  from  being  the  active  allies  and  feeders  of  the 
Social  Evil  that  to-day  they  more  or  less  are — the  one  by 
the  near-nude  costuming  and  dancing  common  to  farce  and 
burlesque,  with  the  wanton  dialogue  and  plot  that  accom- 
pany them ;  the  other  through  the  unchaperoned,  unclothed 
posing  of  youthful  girls  and  women  to  artists  and  sculp- 
tors which  constitutes  the  living  soul  and  centre  of  that 
so-called  "  Bohemia  "  which  is  in  truth  and  fact  nothing 
but  the  Kingdom  of  the  Nude. 

If  the  necessities  of  Art  absolutely  demand  the  study 
and  mastery  of  the  female  torso,  then  by  law  the  models 
should  pose  in  strict  incognito,  with  face  and  hair  con- 
cealed by  a  cap  of  double  chiffon  veiling  coming  below  the 
chin,  and  in  the  presence  of  matron-chaperons  paid  by  the 
State  and  appointed  and  guaranteed  by  a  Mothers  State 
Commission.     Girls  between  six  and  sixteen  in  all  schools 


V 

96  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

without  exception  should  by  law  be  trained  daily  in  light 
gymnastics  and  dancing,  to  ensure  to  each  as  far  as  pos- 
sible bodily  strength  and  grace  and  symetry.  At  the  end 
of  their  training,  the  most  perfectly  formed  should  be 
numbered  and  registered,  and  from  these  annual  lists 
artists  models  should  be  chosen  by  lot.  They  should  be 
allowed  to  pose  only  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and 
eighteen  because  posing  requires  in  the  model  absolute 
passivity  and  idleness  of  both  hands  and  brain,  and  to  fol- 
low this  vocation  longer  than  two  years  is  criminally  to 
waste  the  best  years  of  a  girl's  life  not  only  in  doing  and 
learning  nothing  that  can  advantage  her  in  any  depart- 
ment of  industry  or  home-making,  but  on  the  contrary,  by 
imposing  upon  her  months  and  years  of  personal  idleness, 
actually  trains  her  into  a  loafer  who  not  only  can  not,  but 
who  does  not  ivant  to  do  anything,  and  who  thereby  when 
posing  years  are  over,  may  become  a  human  derelict. 
Artists  and  models  who  break  the  above  regulations  as  to 
nude  posing  should  alike  be  punished  by  fine  and  imprison- 
ment. As  for  the  nude  posing  of  female  models  out  of 
doors  and  their  indecent  posing  within  doors,  the  artist 
who  exacts  and  the  models  who  consent  to  these  degrada- 
tions should  equally  be  imprisoned  for  life. 

That  womanhood  throughout  the  world  must  now  raise 
its  eyes  and  its  ideals  to  Deity,  and  taking  the  Inefifable 
"  Spirit "  or  Divine  Eternal  Feminine  as  revealed  in 
Scripture  for  its  sole  Pattern  and  Cynosure,  must  strive 
after  the  gifts  and  graces  and  activities  therein  ascribed 
or  implied  to  Her,  and  which,  studied  and  lived  and 
taught  by  the  Mary-mother  and  her  -  friends,  the  "  holy 
women,"  raised  for  their  sex  ^  white  and  radiant  stand- 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHOXIC  STUDY.  97 

ard  that,  however  faltering,  dimmed  and  stained  in  the 

fierce  earth-wars  of  Evil  against  Good,  has  still  shone  at 

the  head  of  Christ's  hosts  of  redeemed  and  loving  women 

and  still  zW//  shine  ever  more  and  more  until  they  ''  come 

unto  the  Perfect  Day." 

******* 

"  Whatsoever  things  are  true,"  urged  the  Apostle  Paul, 
*'  whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things  are 
just,  whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are 
lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report — if  there  be 
any  virtue,  and  if  there  be  any  praise — think  on  these 
things." 

And  why?  Because,  as  King  Solomon  ages  before  had 
said,  "  As  a  man  thinketh  so  is  he,"  nay,  so  must  he  be — 
THOUGHT  being  the  man  ! 

If  the  doctrine  of  the  Womanhood  of  the  Divine  Spirit 
were  not  taught  in  open  phrase  by  the  Divine  Son  (though 
since  the  dialect  in  which  He  spoke  has  disappeared  it  is 
not  certain  that  He  did  not  use  the  feminine  gender  in 
referring  to  Her)— it  was  probably  because  in  that  age 
of  fathomless  profligacy  in  the  sex-relation,  it  could  not 
have  been  explicitly  declared  without  being  misunderstood 
and  even  blasphemed;  but  it  is  so  plainly  and  strikingly 
THERE  in  the  New  Testament— it  is  so  manifestly  revealed 
in  every  quality  and  function  therein  attributed  to  the 
"  Spirit  "  that  the  reason  it  has  not  long  ago  been  per- 
ceived and  preached  is  simply  that  through  the  many  gen- 
erations of  unadulterated  Masculinism  which  preceded 
Christianity,  men's  "  hearts  "  had  become  so  "  gross,"  and 
their  "ears"  so  "dull,"  and  their  "eyes"  so  "closed" 
Ihat  they  could  not   "  see  "  with  their  eyes,  nor  "  hear  " 


V 

98  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

with  their  ears,  nor  "  understand  "  with  their  hearts,  and 
thus  be  converted  to  the  Pure  and  Perfect  Deity  of  Dual 
Sex,  and  by  that  Deity  and  not  by  the  strictly  Male  Deity 
so  gratifying  to  masculine  self-absorption  and  self-exalta- 
tion be  "  wholly  healed." 

For  never,  never  while  mortal  man  continues  to  ignore 
this  incontrovertible  Bible  Revelation  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Feminine  in  Heaven  will  he  cease  his  scorn  and 
his  oppression  and  his  desecration  of  the  Human  Feminine 
on  Earth,  nor  as  the  dreadful,  inevitable  re-action  of  these 
— -will  or  can  cease  either  his  individual  decay  and  retro- 
gression or  his  collective  social,  political  and  racial 
failure ! 

Because  "  there  is  a  rock  on  which  every  human  soul 
must  anchor  or  be  split;  it  is  the  sex  opposite  to  its  own/* 


CHAPTER  XV. 

OTHER   VISIONS  OF  THE   DIVINE  FEMININE. 

No  deduction  from  human  experience  is  more  true  than 
that  if  in  any  sentient  being  of  the  universe  there  is  a 
conscious  or  unconscious  need — a  long-felt  want — some- 
where in  the  universe  exists  that  which  can  and  which  will 
one  day  satisfy  the  need  and  fill  the  want. 

Therefore  the  following  examples  of  the  aspirations  and 
yearnings  of  the  human  heart  throughout  the  ages  after 
the  Feminine  in  Deity — to  the  writer  are  confirmation  so 
strong  as  to  its  Reality,  that  it  is  hoped  they  may  assist 
the  convictions  of  others  toward  the  effulgent,  all-blissful, 
all-satisfying,  all-solving  Truth. 

"  In  the  Vishnu  Parana  *  Lakshmi '  or  'Sri '  is  the  sea-born 
goddess,  the  Bride  of  Vishnu,  the  Mother  of  the  world,  the 
Eternal  and  Imperishable.  As  Vishnu  is  all-pervading  so  is 
She  omnipresent.  Vishnu  is  Meaning,  Lakshmi  is  Speech; 
Vishnu  is  Understanding;  Lakshmi  is  Intellect;  He  is  Right- 
eousness, She  is  Devotion;  He  is  the  Creator,  She  is  the 
Creation ;  She,  the  Mother  of  the  world,  is  the  creeping  vine 
and  Vishnu  the  tree  round  which  she  clings ;  She  is  the  Night, 
He  is  the  Day ;  She  is  longing,  He  is  Covetousness ;  He  is  all 
that  is  Male,  She  is  all  that  is  Female.  *  I  bow  to  Sei,  the 
Mother  of  all  beings.  Seated  on  her  lotus  throne  with  eyes 
blue  like  full-blown  lotuses,  reclining  on  the  breast  of  Vishnu.' 
From  thy  propitious  gaze,  O  mighty  Goddess,  men  obtain 
wives,  children,   dwellings,   friends,  harvest,    wealth.     Health 


V 

100  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  strength,  power,  victory,  happiness,  are  easy  of  obtain- 
ment  to  those  upon  whom  Thou  smilest.  Thou  art  the  Mother 
of  all  beings  as  the  God  of  Gods  is  their  Father,  and  the  world, 
whether  animate  or  inanimate,  is  pervaded  by  Thee  and 
Vishnu.  O  Thou  Who  purifiest  all  things— forsake  not  our 
treasures,  our  granaries,  our  dwellings,  our  dependents,  our 
persons,  our  wives;  abandon  not  our  children,  our  friends,  our 
lineage,  our  jewels.  O  Thou  Who  abidest  in  the  bosom  of 
the  God  of  Gods,  the  tongues  of  Brahma  are  unequal  to  cele- 
brate thy  excellence.  Be  propitious  to  me,  O  Goddess,  lotus- 
eyed,  and  never  forsake  me  more.' 

"Another  name  for  the  Universal  Mother  was  'Devaki,'  and 
it  was  declared  that  the  *  other  gods  '  celebrate  her  praises  con- 
tinually as  the  Mother  of  the  Divine  Brahma.  'Thou,'  say 
these  divinities,  '  Which  formerly  contained  Brahma  in  thy 
Person,  art  that  Prakiti,  infinite  and  subtle;  Thou  art  the 
Goddess  of  Speech,  the  Energy  of  the  Creator  of  the  Universe 
and  the  Parent  of  the  Vedas  (the  Hindu  Scriptures).  Thou, 
Eternal  Being,  comprising  in  thy  substance  the  essence  of  all 
created  things,  wast  identical  with  the  Creation;  Thou  wast 
the  Parent  of  the  Tri-form  Sacrifice — becoming  the  germ  of 
all  things ;  Thou  art  Sacrifice,  from  whence  all  fruit  proceeds ; 
Thou  art  Light,  from  whence  day  is  begotten;  Thou  art 
Humility,  the  Mother  of  True  Wisdom;  Thou  art  Kingly 
Policy,  the  Parent  of  Order;  Thou  art  Modesty,  the  Pro- 
genitrix of  Affection;  Thou  art  Longing,  of  Whom  Love  is 
born;  Thou  art  Contentment,  whence  Resignation  is  derived; 
Thou  art  Intelligence,  the  mother  of  Knowledge;  Thou  art 
Patience,  the  parent  of  Fortitude;  Thou  art  the  Heavens 
and  the  stars  are  thy  children  and  from  Thee  does  all  that 
exists  proceed.  Thou  art  Wisdom,  Ambrosia,  Light  and 
Heaven.  Thou  hast  descended  upon  earth  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  world.  Have  compassion  upon  us,  O  Goddess, 
and  do  good  unto  the  world.  Be  proud  of  bearing  that 
Deity  by  Whom  the  Universe  is  upheld.' 

"Among  the  Latins,  Juno  was  originally  the  Female  Deity 
of  Nature  in  its  w-'^ert  extent,  the  defication  of  womanhood — 


.\EIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  loi 

womanhood  in  the  sphere  of  the  divine.  Every  wife  had  her 
own  '  Juno '  or  femtale  guardian  spirit,  and  the  whole  of  a 
woman's  life  in  all  its  moments  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave 
was  under  the  conduct  and  protection  of  this  goddess — but 
especially  her  marriage  and  her  maternity. 

"  This  benignant  Mother  of  the  Pagan  World  was  carried 
over  into  Catholic  Christianity  in  the  person  of  the  Virgin 
Mary  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  Churches  and  the  invocations 
addressed  to  her  by  both  Churches  are  much  alike. 

"  Saint  Germanus,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  says  in  a 
sermon  on  the  Virgin — 'If  you  can  hold  the  earth  in  the 
hollow  of  your  hand  or  circumscribe  the  ocean  with  a  cord — 
if  the  heavens  can  be  contained  in  a  cubit  or  the  hosts  of 
stars  be  numbered;  if  the  drops  of  rain,  or  blades  of  grass 
or  sands  of  the  earth  or  the  forces  of  the  wind  can  be 
estimated — then  it  might  be  possible  for  us  to  handle  this 
mighty  theme.' 

"  St.  Andrew,  in  a  Homily  on  the  Virgin,  says  that — 
'Every  holy  and  reasonable  mind  investigating  the  secret 
mysteries  of  Heaven  and  distinguishing  between  the  orders 
of  superior  spirits,  finds  that  She,  the  Blessed  among  Women, 
is  first  after  the  Redeemer,  that  She,  Who  brought  forth 
God  without  losing  her  virginity,  is  full  of  grace.  This 
Blessed  Virgin,  brighter  than  light,  sweeter  than  all  sweet- 
ness, higher  than  all  might,  illumines  the  whole  world  and 
by  the  persuasiveness  of  her  pre-enninent  suavity  renews  all 
things,  transcending  in  power  and  majesty  the  ranks  of  the 
cherubim  and  seraphim.  She  is  therefore  second  only  to 
God  Who  has  made  her  worthy  to  be  honored  with  praises 
and  Who  has  exalted  her  to  so  great  a  dignity  that  the 
omnipotence  of  God  Himself  cannot  create  a  greater.  This 
is  the  woman  promised  in  the  Paradise  who  by  Divine  Power 
should  bruise  the  serpent's  head.  This  illustrious,  this  blessed 
among  women,  was  foretold  before  all  others  by  the  ancients 
and  typified  by  the  Fire  in  the  Bush,  by  the  Blossom  upon 
the  Rod,  by  the  Dew  upon  the  Fleece.  She  is  the  Mystic 
Ark  of  the  Covenant,  the  Golden  Mercy-Seat,  Jacob's  Ladder, 


V 

102  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  Root  of  Jesse,  the  Throne  of  Solomon,  the  Bow  of  the 
Covenant,  the  Gate  of  Paradise.  She  is  the  Fountain  that 
waters  the  whole  earth,  the  Dawn  that  precedes  the  True 
Sun.  She  is  the  HeaUh  of  all,  the  Reconciler  of  the  whole 
world,  the  Inventress  of  grace,  the  Generatrix  of  life,  the 
Mother  of  sarvation.  She  is  the  Restorer  of  our  First  Parents, 
the  Renewer  of  their  posterity,  the  true  Mother  of  the 
living,  the  Comfort  of  the  miserable,  the  Refuge  of  the 
afflicted,  the  only  Hope  of  sinners.  In  Her  is  all  the  grace 
of  the  Way  and  the  Truth.  In  Her  is  all  the  hope  of  life 
and  of  virtue — 

'  This  Woman  Who  alone 
Unfolded  death's  dark  door, 
This  Woman  Who  alone 
Did  life  and  light  restore. 

"  'Under  her  shade  he  who  turns  aside  from  the  heat  of 
passions  may  find  rest  and  shelter  from  the  oppressions  of 
the  times  and  stillness  from  their  toil  and  tumult.' 

"  In  an  Encyclical  given  at  Rome  in  December,  1864,  on 
the  tenth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  dogma  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  Roman 
Pontiff,  Pius  IX,  said  to  the  faithful: — That  God  may  accede 
more  easily  to  my  and  your  prayers  and  to  those  of  all  his 
faithful  servants,  let  us  employ  in  all  confidence  as  our 
mediatrix  with  Him.  the  Virgin  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  Who 
(in  the  words  of  St.  Bernard)  has  destroyed  all  heresies 
throughout  the  world,  and  Who,  the  most  loving  Mother  of 
us  all,  is  very  gracious  and  full  of  mercy,  allows  Herself  to 
be  entreated  by  all,  shows  Herself  most  clement  toward  all, 
and  takes  under  her  pitying  care  all  our  necessities  with 
most  ample  affection,  and  sitting  as  a  Queen  on  the  right 
hand  of  her  only  begotten  Son,  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  .in 
a  golden  vestment  clothed  round  with  various  adornments, 
there  is  nothing  which  She  cannot  obtain  from  Him.' 

"  The  late  Catholic  archbishop   Spalding  of  Baltimore,  in 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  103 

speaking  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  said — 'Wliat  a  privilege!  To 
have  a  Mother  in  Heaven — and  so  tender,  so  powerful  and 
so  sweet  a  Mother!  Christ,  Who  denied  Her  nothing  on 
earth,  will  surely  deny  Her  nothing  in  heaven.  Whatever 
we  ask  through  Mary  with  earnest  and  persevering  faith, 
we  shall  most  certainly  obtain  if  it  be  conducive  to  out 
salvation.  Our  faith  and  devotion  should  be  stimulated  by 
the  fact  that  She  is  the  chosen  Patroness  of  this  our  beloved 
country  of  America,  for  the  welfare  and  prosperity  of  which, 
both  temporal  and  spiritual,  she  will  not  fail  to  raise  her 
immaculate  hands  before  the  throne  of  her  Divine  Son.'  "* 


In  October,  1897,  the  late  Pontifif,  Leo  XIII,  issued  an 
Encyclical  to  all  the  Faithful,  exhorting  them  on  ac- 
count of  the  falling  away  from  the  Church  and  the  wide- 
spread decay  of  faith,  to  "  redouble  prayers  to  Mary,"'] 
who  certainly  would  hear  and  would  answer  prayer  and 
love  toward  her  with  renewed  blessings  to  the  Church 
and  to  the  progress  of  religion.  Among  Catholic  Asso- 
ciatioi.i  he  assigned  the  place  of  honor  to  the  Confra- 
ternity of  the  Holy  Rosary  founded  by  St.  Dominick,  and 
of  which  "  the  Rosary  of  Mary  is  the  Soul  of  the  In- 
stitution " — being  *'  the  suppliant  host  gathered  by  Father 
Dominick  under  the  standard  of  the  Glorious  Mother." 
Leo  further  declared,  that  "  the  Roman  pontiffs  have  ever 
lavished  the  most  exalted  praise  on  this  Association,  so 
devoted  to  Mary,"  and  expressed  himself  as  entertaining 
the  most  lively  hope  that  "  the  prayers  and  praises  of  this 
Rosary  of  Mary  will  prove  most  powerful  when,  issuing 
from  the  lips  and  hearts  of  a  great  multitude,  they  go 

*  Monumental  Christianity,  ch.  8,   p.  212  et  seq.,  by  John  P.  Lundy. 
Bouton,  Piblisher,   706  Broadway,   New  York,  1876. 
t  Italics  on  this  and  the  next  page  arc  the  writer's. 


V 

104  ^V£H^    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

on  unceasingly  by  day  and  night  in  the  different  parts  of 
the  globe." 

The  same  Leo,  in  his  letter  of  May  26,  1903,  to  the 
Lord  Cardinals  with  reference  to  the  celebration  of  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  adoption  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  as  an  Article  of  Faith — uses  the  following 
language :  "  Devotion  to  the  Mother  of  God  not  only 
has  been  from  my  tender  years  among  my  most  cherished 
affections,  but  it  is  for  me  one  of  the  most  potent  means 
of  defense  granted  by  Providence  to  the  Catholic  Church. 
At  all  times  and  in  all  trials  and  persecutions  the  Church 
has  had  recourse  to  Mary,  and  in  her  has  ever  found 
solace  and  protection.  And  now  that  the  days  in  which 
we  live  are  so  stormy  and  so  big  with  menace  for  the 
Church  herself,  I  am  rejoiced  and  stimulated  to  hope, 
when  I  see  the  faithful  seizing  the  auspicious  opportunity 
presented  by  this  fiftieth  anniversary  and  turning  with  a 
unanimous  impulse  of  love  and  confidence  to  her  who  is 
invoked  as  the  Help  of  Christians." 

And  finally,  the  present  Pope,  Pius  X.,  thus  remarkably 
concludes  his  encyclical  of  January  11,  1907,  upon  the 
French  Church  and  State  Separation  law :  "  In  full  con- 
fidence that  the  Virgin  Immaculate,  Daughter  of  our 
Father,  Mother  of  the  Word,  Spouse  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
will  obtain  for  you  from  the  most  holy  and  adorable  Trin- 
ity better  days — from  the  bottom  of  our  heart  we  give 
you,  venerable  brothers  and  the  whole  people,  our  apos- 
tolic benediction." 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


IDEAL   WOMANHOOD. 


Of  the  persons  of  this  generation  who  may  honor  by 
reading  these  pages  upon  Triune  Deity,  probably  all  of  the 
men  and  most  of  the  women  will  regard  them  not  as  a 
sober  study  and  statement  of  vital  and  tremendous  truths, 
but  as  the  scarcely  intelligible  ravings  of  a  rhapsodist. 

Nevertheless,  here  and  there  a  woman  will  understand 
me  and  believe  me,  and  also  here  and  there  a  girl — and  to 
such  I  would  appeal  to  form  themselves  into  an  association 
to  be  called  "  The  Daughters  of  the  Spirit "  and  individu- 
ally and  collectively  throughout  the  rest  of  their  lives  to 
strive  to  realize  here  on  earth  the  true  feminine  image 
and  likeness  of  the  eternal,  ineffable  Feminine  in  Heaven ; 
— cherishing  first  of  all  ardent  and  absolute  faith  in  and 
love  to  Triune  Deity  as  the  life  of  all  womanhood — 
cherishing  immaculate  purity  as  the  soul  of  all  woman- 
hood,— absolute  modesty  as  the  sacredness  of  all  woman- 
hood,— exquisite  refinement  as  the  atmosphere  of  all 
womanhood, — sweetnoss  and  gentleness  as  the  charm  of  all 
womanhood, — patience  and  persuasiveness  as  the  power 
of  all  womanhood, — pity  and  compassion  as  the  halo  of 
all  womanhood,  and  perfect  humility  as  the  wisdom  of  all 
womanhood. 

Pursuing  knowledge  and  understanding  as  the  strength 


io6  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

of  all  womanhood, — prudence  and  discretion  as  the  safety 
of  all  womanhood, — household  skill  as  the  obligation  of 
all  womanhood,  and  industry  and  thrift  as  the  dowry  of  all 
womanhood ; 

Cultivating  health  and  vitality  as  the  imperative  of  all 
womanhood, — daintiness  and  grace  as  the  magic  of  all 
womanhood;  and  personal  beauty  as  the  expression  of 
all  womanhood; — 

Promoting  beauty  in  everything  as  the  mission  of  all 
womanhood, — ardent  in  all  humanities  as  the  maternal  in 
all  womanhood, — devotee  of  husband  and  home  as  the 
bliss  of  all  womanhood, — inspirer  and  encourager  of  men 
as  the  glory  of  all  womanhood; — 

"  Given  to  hospitality  "  as  the  graciousness  of  all  wom- 
anhood,— exacting  courtesies  and  chivalry  as  the  preroga- 
tive of  all  womanhood, — promoting  feminine  achievement 
as  the  duty  of  all  womanhood, — defending  and  not  dis- 
paraging women  as  the  self-respect  of  all  womanhood ; — 

Organizing  and  practicing  housekeeping  on  Rochdale 
co-operative  principles  as  the  civilization  for  all  woman- 
hood,— and  electing  from  among  themselves  Women's 
Auxiliary  Boards  to  the  Town,  State  and  National  Coun- 
cils, Commissions,  Legislatures  and  Congresses  of  our 
country  as  the  one  genuine,  non-sham,  worth-while 
"suffrage"  for  all  womanhood — irresistible,  all-powerful, 
because  all-influential. 

Although  no  one  woman  can  fulfil  perfectly  any  one  of 
these  attributes  and  functions  of  Ideal  Womanhood,  yet 
each  and  every  woman  can  approximately  fulfil  several  of 
them,  and  collective  Christian  women  by  consciously  and 
intelligently  striving  toward  this  Divine  Feminine  Ideal 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  107 

will  in  the  end  as  a  sex  present  as  wondrous  an  image  and 
likeness  of  the  Divine  Omnipotent  Womanhood  Eternal 
in  the  Heavens  as  in  the  magnificent  entirety  of  its 
achievements  and  institutions  human  manhood  to-day 
presents  a  god-like  image  and  likeness  of  the  Divine 
Omnipotent  Manhood  Eternal  in  the  Same  Heavens. 

O  Waiting  Women  of  the  World!  Sisters  Beloz-cd! 
Awake! — Unite!  You  have  everything  to  gain.  You 
have  nothing  to  lose  but  your  chains — your  vitriolic  chains 
of  flesh  and  sense.  From  now  onward  enroll  yourselves 
under  the  snowy  and  joyous  banner  of  The  Spirit,  taking 
as  your  mottoes  that  of  the  winning  Frances  Willard — 
"  Do  Everything  "  and  that  of  the  inspiring  "Aunt  Mary  " 
of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — "  Do  more  than  you  can,"  and 
for  your  method  that  "  persuasiveness  of  pre-eminent 
suavity"  ascribed  by  the  saintly  Catholic  to  the  Blessed 
Virgin  Mary,  and  '  all  will  yet  be  well." 


ACTS  OF  THE  CHURCH 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

ACTS    OF    THE    CHURCH  :    THE    ENEMY    SOWS    TARES. 
I. 

The  Enemy  Sows  Tares. 

True  Christianity  is  founded  upon  Science,  or  the  In- 
variableness  of  Cause  and  Effect,  as  much  as  Chemistry 
is;  for  just  so  much  Love  as  the  human  race  wills  to  pour 
into  the  crucible  of  Life,  just  so  much  Happiness  does 
that  crucible  yield  back,  and  no  more. 

That  the  Author  of  Christianity  challenged  the  strictest 
scientific  test  on  behalf  of  his  Gospel  of  Love  is  clear  from 
his  own  declarations: — "A  good  tree  cannot  bring  forth 
evil  fruit,  neither  can  a  corrupt  tree  bring  forth  good 
fruit.  Do  men  gather  grapes  of  thorns  or  figs  of  thistles? 
Wherefore  by  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them'';  and 
again, "'  //  ayiy  man  will  do  the  Father's  will,  he  shall  knoiv 
the  doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God." 

It  is  true  that  in  order  to  gain  the  attention  and  credence 
of  his  hearers  to  the  spiritual  truths  He  was  revealing, 
Jesus  amazed  and  awed  them  by  physical  miracles ;  but  so 
soon  as  through  the  lives  and  teachings  of  his  followers 
the  great  principle  of  Love  to  God  and  Man  had  become 
accepted  as  the  axis  of  human  conduct,  the  superhuman 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  109 

signs  and  wonders  ceased.  They  were  no  longer  neces- 
sary. "See  how  these  Christians  love  one  another!"  was 
the  Pagan  comment  upon  the  converts  of  the  first  century 
— and  from  that  age  to  this  the  superior  beauty  and  happi- 
ness of  Christianized  lives,  together  with  the  progress  and 
prosperity  which  such  lives  invariably  bestow  upon  a 
nation  in  proportion  to  their  number,  are  all  the  guarantee 
of  its  Divine  Origin  that  the  Divine  Gospel  has  needed  for 
the  progressive  extension  of  its  Divine  Kingdom. 

Why  then,  since  it  is  nearly  two  thousand  years  since 
Christ  gave  us  this  Gospel  so  undeniably  from  Heaven,  is 
but  one-third  of  the  world  even  yet  nominally  Christian, 
and,  worse  still,  why  is  the  Christianity  of  even  that  third 
not  only  so  lamentably  imperfect,  but  actually,  at  the 
present  time,  retrograding? 

On  the  night  of  the  Farewell  Supper  Jesus  said  to  His 
disciples ; — "  /  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but 
ye  cannot  bear  them  now." 

May  we  interpret  this  saying  of  the  Divine  Son  about 
to  lay  down  his  life  for  the  world  to  mean — that  on  account 
of  the  deep  submergence  of  humanity  in  the  slough  of 
sensuality  into  which  the  fallen  Lucifer  had  lured  it,  our 
Lord  was  unable  to  reveal  even  to  his  own  intimate  dis- 
ciples the  Divine  Spirit  He  was  promising  them  as  the 
"  Divine  Feminine  "  that  She  truly  is? 

In  the  Semitic  mind  was  "  sex "  a  conception  so  de- 
graded that  it  would  have  been  impossible  at  that  time  to 
lift  it  to  the  Plane  of  Deity  without  blaspheming  Deity  in 
that  mind? 

Was  the  Self-existing  Celestial  Mother  obliged  to  be 
left  enshrouded  in  a  veil  of  mystery  in  order  to  insure  any 


no  NEW   YORK:  A   ^M PHONIC  STUDY, 

manhood  welcome  and  allegiance  to  her  guidance  and 
regency  of  the  Church  as  about  to  be  committed  to  Her 
by  the  Father  and  the  Son  ? 

Certain  and  sorrowful  it  is  that  after  the  death  of  the 
Apostles  her  Mission  and  her  Power  were  soon  lost  sight 
of,  even  by  believers. 

Nevertheless,  so  irresistibly  convincing  was  the  cruci- 
fied Christ's  commandment  of  "  love  for  Love's  sake  " — 
that,  taught  just  as  He  personally  had  delivered  it  and 
lived  it,  its  results  in  human  uplift  would  soon  have  scien- 
tifically demonstrated  its  absolute  truth,  and  the  rescue  of 
human  womanhood  on  earth,  together  with  the  unveiling 
of  the  Divine  Womanhood  in  Heaven  have  been  accom- 
plished ages  ago,  had  not  the  same  old  "dragon" — Mas- 
culinism,  wroth  with  this  Divine  Feminine  whose  converts 
to  Love  in  the  person  of  the  ineffable  Jesus  were  every- 
where threatening  and  dissolving  his  dragon  yoke,  blinded 
that  magnificent  genius  and  over-mastering  leader,  the 
Apostle  Paul,  first  into  exalting  celibacy  above  the  married 
state,  and  second,  into  forbidding  Christian  women  to 
teach  or  even  to  ask  a  question  in  the  meetings  of  the 
faithful.  He  ordained  that  woman's  part  in  the  churches 
was  to  "  keep  silence,"  and  if  she  wanted  to  know  about 
anything  she  must  "  ask  her  husband  at  home." 

Now  Paul,  though  of  purest  Jewish  descent  and  train- 
ing, was  born  and  brought  up  in  the  pagan  city  of  Tarsus, 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  he  had  taken  over  with  him  into 
Christianity  those  gross  and  harsh  conceptions  of,  and 
that  withering  contempt  for,  the  weaker  sex  which  invari- 
ably prevail  in  societies  immersed  in  sex-desecration  such 
as  he  described  in  his  own  epistle  to  the  Romans.* 

*  Romans,   1,  24-32. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  in 

Moreover,  being  converted  and  becoming  an  apostle 
only  after  the  departure  of  Christ  from  the  earth,  he  was 
not  eye-witness  with  the  twelve  of  the  new  manhood-atti- 
tude toward  womanhood  which  they  had  daily  noted  in 
their  Divine  Master  and  which  afterward,  therefore,  ap- 
peared in  their  writings  and  doubtless  in  their  lives. 

Thus  Paul,  the  special  apostle  of  spiritual  and  intellec- 
tual freedom  for  men  converts,  proved  also  a  still  more 
potent  influence  for  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  subjec- 
tion of  women  believers,  and  the  continuing  of  the  world 
tragedy  which  the  Savior  had  come  to  heal  was  the  in- 
evitable result.  Estopped  from  freely  sharing  in  his 
emancipating  gospel,  and  commanded  each  to  accept  the 
measure  of  her  husband's  mind  as  the  limit  of  her  own, 
the  doors  of  the  world-old  mental  prison  which  Christ  had 
thrown  wide  open  to  Mary  of  Bethany  and  all  Hke-minded 
women,  crashed  back  upon  them. 

Christian  motherhood,  re-enslaved  and  forbidden  to 
think,  could  bring  forth  only  slavish  sons,  and  within  a 
few  centuries  the  nominally  "  christian "  but  abjectly 
priest-ridden  Latin  manhood  had  all  unconsciously  turned 
its  back  upon  the  "  truth "  which  would  have  made  it 
"  free  "  and  was  intent  only  upon  transferring  to  the  chris- 
tion  bishop  of  Rome  the  combined  spiritual  and  political 
autocracy  over  Western  Europe  which  had  first  been 
forged  and  wielded  by  Rome's  pagan  emperors. 

The  English  philosopher  Hobbes  declared,  and  two  cen- 
turies later  the  French  Zola  in  his  terrific  triple  arraign- 
ment— "  Lourdes,"  "  Paris"  "  Rome  " — drove  home  the 
charge,  that  under  another  name  and  in  a  more  specious 
guise  the  Papacy  is  the  resurgence,  the  re-incarnation,  of 


112  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  terrible  Roman  Empire — equalling  it  in  ambition,  in 
despotism,  in  corruption  and  in  cruelty,  and  far  surpassing 
it  in  falsehood,  treachery  and  craft. 

The  Master  had  told  his  followers  "  call  no  man  '  father,' 
for  One  is  your  Father,  even  God." 

But  directly  defying  this  divine  warning,  for  ages  the 
bishop  of  Rome  has  assumed  to  be  the  "  Holy  Father  "  of 
all  Christendom,  also  Christ's  infallible  "vicar  "  or  "  vice- 
regent  "  on  earth,  logically  triple-crowned,  therefore,  as 
being  the  lord  of  lords  and  king  of  kings  before  whom 
every  earthly  potentate  as  well  as  every  fellow-being  must 
slavishly  kneel  *  and  outside  whose  spiritual  realm  of  the 
"  Church  "  no  soul  is  safe  from  eternal  death  because  the 
Pope  supremely,  and  the  bishops  and  priests  of  the  so- 
called  "  apostolic  succession  "  in  less  degree,  together  hold 
the  keys  of  heaven  and  hell  for  the  entire  human  race. 

Many  centuries  were  required  fully  to  establish  this 
awful  dominion,  neither  could  it  ever  have  been  accom- 
pHshed  and  maintained  save  by  the  army  of  men  celibates 
which  for  fifteen  centuries  Rome  has  selected  in  their 
early  years,  has  carefully  taught  and  trained  to  her  twin 
ideals  of  abject  obedience  and  ruthless  despotism,  and 
thereafter  has  scattered  as  her  active  emissaries  all  over 
the  globe. 

For  a  thousand  years  of  the  above  period  the  whole 
mind  and  soul  of  western  Christendom  was  as  absolutely 
as  possible  chained,  kept  down  and  blighted  by  this  great 
CeHbate  Hierarchy.    In  the  course  of  events  the  territories 

•  To  this  day  Catholics  to  whom  the  Pope  grants  an  audience  must 
kneel  throughout  the  whole  of  it — a  usage  inexorably  exacted,  no 
matter  how  prolonged  the  interview. 


NEPy   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  113 

and  secular  powers  of  the  Roman  Emperors  became  divided 
among  the  barbarian  leaders  of  the  successive  invading 
hordes  that  over-ran  the  imperial  realm,  and  "  dark  "  in- 
deed were  the  long  ages  through  which  Europe  grovelled 
and  agonized  beneath  the  double  yoke  of  the  so-called 
'•  apostolic  succession "  of  its  priests  and  the  so-called 
"divine  right"  of  its  kings!  Had  not  the  teachings  of 
the  Divine  Eternal  Trinity  been  miraculously  enshrined 
and  preserved  in  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  scriptures, 
to  this  day  the  human  mind  would  not  have  broken 
through  these  Luciferian  forgings. 

But  even  as  beneath  a  deep-frozen  ice-crust  the  living 
stream  may  still  run  living  on,  so  in  a  few  hearts  here  and 
there  flowed  far  down  this  "  living  water  "  of  the  Word  of 
God.  Through  the  slow  generations  higher  and  higher 
rose  a  sacred  flood  of  protest  and  revolt  against  spiritual 
tyranny  and  oppression,  until  in  the  giant  personality  of 
Martin  Luther  spiritual  freedom  burst  its  bonds  and 
spread  far  and  wide  the  great  and  glorious  Protestant 
Reformation  of  Religion. 

The  yoke  of  the  "  apostolic  succession  "  was  rent  first 
from  Luther's  own  dauntless  neck  and  then  from  the  necks 
of  all  courageous  enough  to  uphold  him. 

"  Ye  are  an  holy  priesthood  to  offer  up  spiritual  sacri- 
fices acceptable  to  God  by  Jesus  Christ/'  declared  St. 
Peter  to  his  converts,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile. 

''  Ye  are  all  kings  and  priests  unto  God,"  proclaimed 
St.  John.* 

Upon  the  questioning  mind  of  the  youthful  monk  search- 

*/  Petet,  3:5-9,  and  Revelations,  1:6  and  5:10. 


114  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ing  and  sifting  his  newly-found  Bible  for  the  "  truth," 
these  teachings  shone  as  the  Magna  Charta  of  freedom 
for  every  human  soul.  To  him  they  meant  that  no  one 
man,  nor  any  hierarchy  of  men,  was  ever  commissioned 
or  intended  to  come  between  the  soul  and  its  Maker.  Each 
soul,  whether  of  man  or  woman,  was  to  be  its  own  "  priest  " 
to  offer  up  its  living  self  in  perfect  love  and  surrender  to 
the  God  of  Love.  Each  soul,  whether  of  man  or  woman, 
was  to  be  its  own  "  king  "  to  rule  its  own  heart  and  will  in 
accordance  with  the  law  of  love  as  taught  and  lived  by  the 
Divine  Son  of  that  God. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

ACTS   OF    THE    CHURCH  :    THE    "'tRUTH'"    MAKES   "fREE/' 

The  nations  that  followed  Luther  were  Protestant  Ger- 
many, Holland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Norway,  Finland,  Ice- 
land, Switzerland,  Scotland,  Wales  and  non-conformist 
England.  But  there  the  Reformation  halted.  Though 
humanity  had  broken  the  yoke  of  the  priest,  it  was  still 
too  morally  feeble,  sturdy  little  Holland  excepted,  to  break 
the  yoke  of  its  kings,  while  so  intricated  within  and  over 
the  human  mind  had  become  the  religious  and  the  secular 
authorities,  that  the  Protestant  potentates  who  had  thrown 
overboard  the  Papacy  soon  began  to  impose  upon  their 
subjects  their  own  religious  creeds  and  forms  whether  the 
subjects  were  in  sympathy  with  them  or  not. 

In  England,  for  instance,  the  sovereign  and  his  ob- 
sequious Parliament  chose  to  place  over  the  national  church 
they  had  established  a  hierarchy  of  bishops  which  claimed 
to  continue  the  "  catholic  apostolic  succession "  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  communions,  and  thereby  to  exercise 
over  the  inferior  clergy  and  the  laity  something  of  the 
lordship  and  authority  of  their  predecessors.  To  the 
intense  disgust  and  distrust  of  the  English  disciples  of 
Luther  and  Calvin,  the  English  bishops  insisted  that  the 
reformed  presbyters  and  their  congregations  should  wor- 
ship only  in  the  words  and  should  wear  in  the  chancel 


V 

Ii6  XEIV   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

only  the  garb  prescribed  by  the  church  liturgy  or  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  two  thirds  of  whose  matchless  formulas 
were  translated  from  the  old-time  Roman  missals. 

And  so  it  came  to  pass — after  long  years  of  friction,  of 
striving,  and  of  punishments  by  silencings,  fines,  imprison- 
ments, mutilations  and  in  some  cases  by  death — that  multi- 
tudes of  ardent  and  disaffected  Puritans  betook  themselves 
and  their  families  across  the  trackless  Atlantic  to  the 
trackless  North  American  wilderness  in  search  of  that 
"  freedom  to  worship  God  "  in  their  own  way  and  accord- 
ing to  their  own  convictions  which  alone  to  them  could 
make  life  "worth  living." 

Alone  there  with  God  and  nature — amid  those  *'  forests 
which  God  must  have  loved  since  they  were  the  most 
beautiful  He  ever  planted  " — a  new  race  was  born  and 
reared  to  a  free  but  self-disciplined,  self-governing  citi- 
zenship such  as  the  world  had  never  known  before;  and 
when,  after  about  a  century  and  a  half  of  this  "  State 
without  a  king  and  this  Church  without  a  bishop,"  its 
titular  sovereign  proposed  to  rivet  upon  it  one  at  least  of 
the  two  old-time  yokes,  a  few  of  these  field-and-forest 
freemen  fired  for  their  freemen's  "  rights  "  the  immortal 
shot  which  their  fellow-farmers  echoed  the  country  over 
with  "  their  lives,  their  fortunes  and  their  sacred  honours." 
At  their  head  they  placed  the  Virginia  farmer  whom  after 
his  death  the  civilized  world  as  with  one  voice  eulogized  as 
mortal  manhood's  theretofore  highest  expression,  and  who, 
if  a  leader  is  to  be  judged  by  the  results  of  his  life-work, 
certainly  has  not  been  paralleled  since. 

Through  his  generalship  American  Independence  was 
achieved;  through  his  urging  the  Constitutional  Conven- 


NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  117 

tion  was  assembled;  under  his  chairmanship  the  Federal 
Constitution  was  adopted;  by  his  presidency  the  Federal 
Government  was  organized.  God  Almighty  in  Heaven, 
the  Divine  Trinity  of  Father,  Mother  and  Only  Son,  be 
forever  praised  for  their  divine  gift  to  the  world  of 
George  Washington,  Humanity's  Ideal  Realized,  in  that — 
untcmpted  by  the  dazzling  success  and  acclaim  which 
crowned  the  devotion  of  what  President  McKinley  called 
his  "vast  and  varied  abilities"  to  the  heaven-cause  of 
Human  Happiness — throughout  his  forty-five  years  of 
unpaid  public  service  he  never  swerved  from  "  loving 
mercy,"  from  "  doing  justly  "  or  from  "  walking  humbly 
with  his  God" * 

•iiicah,  6:8. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


MASCULINISM. 


Not  even  the  New  Manhood  evolved  from  the  united 
teachings  of  the  Divine  Scriptures  and  the  American  for- 
est, was,  however,  by  any  means  freed  from  MascuHnism. 

In  1776,  when  after  signing  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence in  Philadelphia,  John  Adams  of  Boston  playfully 
but  proudly  wrote  home  to  his  devoted  wife  that  he  had 
been  assisting  at  the  "  birth  of  a  fine  boy,"  that  wise  and 
brilliant  woman  replied  to  the  momentous  announcement : 
"  And,  by  the  way,  in  the  new  code  of  laws  I  suppose  it 
will  be  necessary  to  make,  I  desire  you  to  remember  the 
ladies  and  to  be  more  favorable  to  them  than  your  ances- 
tors were.  Do  not  put  such  unlimited  power  into  the  hands 
of  the  husbands.  Remember  all  men  would  be  tyrants  if 
they  could." 

On  another  occasion  she  wrote: — "  If  we  mean  to  have 
heroes,  statesmen  and  philosophers  we  should  have  learned 
women." 

But  for  these  pregnant  warnings  not  even  the  American 
revolutionists  were  as  yet  ready ;  for  though  the  Brother- 
hood of  Man  was  laid  as  the  foundation-rock  of  their  new 
Republic,  the  Sisterhood  of  Woman  which  should  have 
been  imbedded  beside  it  for  the  upbuilding  thereon  of  the 
twin  half  of  the  ideal  structure,  remained  unthought  of. 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  119 

Husband  and  wife  continued  to  be  "  one  "  and  "  that  one 
the  husband."  American  men,  like  all  other  men  since 
history  began,  considered  womanhood  as  practically  a  part 
of  manhood  functioning  automatically  for  his  home  com- 
fort and  for  the  perpetuation  of  his  race,  and  the  struggle 
for  an  American  Republic  had  not  changed  this  view. 
Under  the  new  and  glorious  conditions  for  white  manhood 
the  secret  profanation  of  white  womanhood  continued 
permissible  and  possible  from  one  end  of  the  country  to 
the  other,  and  legal  marriage  was  still  withheld  from  its 
black  slave  womanhood. 

Thus  Masculinism  fastened  its  demon-clutch  on  the 
new  civilization.  As  of  old,  it  ravened  and  battened  on 
human  souls  in  the  hidden  dens  and  lairs  of  human  life, 
waiting,  as  so  often  before  in  history,  .for  yet  another 
youthful  nation  to  grow  rich  and  great  and  self-confident 
— when  it  would  spring  forth  and  once  more  overpower 
with  Satanic  strength  the  humanity  created  by  Deity  in 
Deity's  own  image  for  the  express  purpose  of  destroy- 
ing it ! 

How  had  this  oversight  happened  ?  How  had  this  most 
dreadful  enemy  been  overlooked  ? 

When  the  "  Woman  clothed  with  the  Sun  " — otherwise 
the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Dove  of  Heaven,  the  Divine  Eternal 
Feminine — by  the  sails  of  the  Mayflower  as  by  "  the  two 
wings  of  a  great  eagle  "  *  wafted  Herself  across  the  sea 
to  the  American  wilderness,  therein  to  find  *'  for  a  time 
and  times  and  half  a  time  "  shelter  and  rest  from  the 
persecutions  of  her  "  dragon  "  enemy,  and  amid  its  virgin 

*  Revelation,  12:14. 


120  NEW   YORK:  A    S'VMPHONIC  STUDY, 

fastnesses  to  found  the  pure  Realm  of  Christ  thus  far 
impossible  in  the  priest-ridden,  king-ridden,  lust-ridden 
eastern  hemisphere — can  it  be  that  deep  and  dark  within 
the  sacred  hold  of  the  lit.tle  vessel  was  borne  also  a  dragon 
^%%  which  when  hatched  and  grown  was  certain  to  con- 
tinue against  that  Realm  the  world-old  persecutions  of  its 
Satanic  father?  How  was  it  that  no  eye  saw — no  foot 
crushed — the  embryonic  monster? 


CHAPTER  XX. 

MISTRESS    HUTCHINSON    AND    MASCULINISM. 

Not  from  the  Mayflower  at  Plymouth  in  1620,  but  from 
another  little  bark  at  Boston  in  1636 — there  had  landed 
with  her  husband  and  band  of  children,  the  brilliant 
Mistress  Ann  Hutchinson. 

Mr.  Hutchinson  was  a  man  of  fortune  and  of  family, 
and  she,  the  daughter  of  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of 
England,  was  a  blood  relation  of  the  great  poet  Dryden. 
Such  was  the  personal  importance  of  the  newcomers,  that 
on  arriving  they  were  received  and  lodged  in  the  only 
brick  house  the  little  settlement  could  boast — the  house  of 
the  colonist  Coddington. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson  soon  showed  herself  an  inborn  leader, 
It  being  the  custom  of  the  Puritan  men  to  meet  on  Thurs- 
day to  discuss  the  sermons  of  the  previous  Sabbath,  her 
ardent  religionism  instituted  similar  weekly  meetings 
among  the  Puritan  women — an  entirely  new  feminine  de- 
parture which  made  her  the  true  fore-runner  of  the  now 
all-pervading  and  all-discussing  American  club-woman. 

Skilled  in  the  domestic  arts  and  in  nursing,  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson's ready  help  and  sympathy  both  in  health  and  in  sick- 
ness made  her  a  ministering  angel  "  longed  for  "  in  many 
a  pioneer  household,  while  so  exhaustive  was  her  Bible 
knowledge,  and  so  persuasive  her  logic,  that  the  views  and 


122  NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

convictions  of  this  "masterpiece  of  woman's  wit" — as 
an  admirer  called  her — spread  from  her  women  listeners 
to  the  men  of  their  families,  then  to  the  Boston  clergy  and 
even  to  Governor  Vane  himself. 

Ann.  Hutchinson  never  committed  her  conclusions  to 
writing,  and  they  have  so  confusedly  come  down  in  the 
reports  of  her  opponents  and  vilifiers  that  whether  she 
fully  accepted  the  terrible  Calvinistic  "  Confession  and 
Covenant " — "  You  do  acknowledge  that  every  person 
from  the  very  moment  of  his  birth  is  under  God's  wrath 
and  curse,  and  that  your  own  nature  is  utterly  vile  and 
void  of  all  goodness" — or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  she 
attempted  to  soften  and  spiritualize  the  iron  creed — certain 
it  is  that,  not  the  ministers  of  Boston,  but  those  outside  of 
Boston,  took  the  alarm  and  decided  to  indict  her  for 
heresy. 

She  was  silenced,  taken  from  her  home  and  confined 
in  another  household,  then  brought  before  the  assembled 
ministers  and  deacons  of  the  colony,  by  them  bitterly  ac- 
cused, scornfully  questioned,  and  though  soon  again  to 
become  a  mother,  compelled  to  remain  standing  through- 
out the  sessions,  and  finally,  since  she  steadfastly  refused 
to  recede  from  her  position,  she  was  exiled  from  the  colony 
with  her  family. 

"Better  he  cast  out  of  the  church  than  deny  Christ" 
was  her  comment — as  with  her  baby  in  her  arms  she  went 
forth  into  the  wilderness. 

Ann  Hutchinson's  husband  remained  devotedly  loyal 
to  .his  gifted  wife,  but  none  of  the  Boston  ministers  who 
had  previously  agreed  with  her,  took  her  part — doubtless 
from  shamefacedness  at  championing  a  '"  woman  " — and 


NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  123 

possibly  even  her  oldest  son  went  with  the  tide,  for  when 
the  family  left  Boston  he  remained  behind.  Their  first 
host  in  Boston,  however,  Mr.  Coddington,  of  the  "  first 
brick  house,"  shared  their  exile,  and  the  party  betook 
themselves  to  the  previously  cast-out  Roger  Williams  in 
Rhode  Island.  Later,  the  Hutchinsons  made  their  sad- 
dened way  through  the  forest  to  New  Rochelle,  just  north 
of  beautiful  Manhattan  Island,  where,  in  an  uprising  of 
the  Indians  against  the  Dutch  governor,  and  but  eight 
years  after  their  landing  in  America,  the  hapless  home- 
seekers  were  all  massacred  save  one  little  girl.  The  clerical 
foes  of  the  martyred  mother  exulted  in  her  hellish  fate 
and  saw  in  it  the  just  judgment  of  Heaven  upon  a  pre- 
sumptuous member  of  the  subject  sex  whom  they  held  to 
be  inspired  by,  and  even  in  actual  personal  communion 
with,  the  devil ! 

Puritan  womanhood  had  received  its  terrible  lesson. 
Henceforth  it  openly  questioned  Puritan  theology  no 
more.  It  accepted  whatever  was  imposed  upon  it,  sub- 
sided into  the  immemorial  woman  role  of  "  silent  partner  " 
in  human  civilization,  and  while  outwardly  conforming 
and  non-protesting,  simply  thereafter,  woman-fashion, 
thought  its  own  thoughts  about  the  stern  masculine  doc- 
trines that  no  woman's  mind  could  by  nature  endure  or 
would  ever  by  nature  have  conceived. 

The  late  Mrs.  Craigie  (John  Oliver  Hobbs)  born  in 
New  England  though  by  cradle  and  lifelong  residence 
wholly  of  Old  England,  said  after  her  last  visit  to  this 
country  in  1905 — ''American  capitalists  will  give  any- 
thing and  everything  to  the  women  of  their  families ;  only, 
they  must  not  ask  questions  nor  proffer  advice." 


V 

124  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

The  shrewd  observation  is  a  flash-light  not  only  upon 
the  masterful  American  husbands  so  absurdly  bemoaned 
by  foreigners  as  being  patient  driven  slaves  of  useless  and 
contemptuous  wives — but  equally  on  their  Puritan  fore- 
fathers as  against  the  unconquerable  Ann  Hutchnson. 
The  epoch-making  Ibsen  also  pierced  the  true  inwardness 
of  her  life-tragedy  when  in  his  comment  upon  his  own 
"  Doll's  House  "  he  wrote : — "  In  our  modern  society  the 
woman  cannot  be  true  to  herself,  for  society's  laws  are 
formulated  by  man  and  they  criticize  feminine  actions 
from  the  man's  point  of  view.  .  .  .  Modern  Society 
is  not  human  society,  but  merely  a  society  of  men-folk  " — 
i.  e.,  a  one-sex  society. 

But  what  if  the  All-Maker  meant  human  society  to  be  a 
two-sex  society?  What  if  the  woman  mind  is  by  divine 
appointment  that  alert,  watch-dog  mind  intended  to  sleep 
with  one  eye  and  one  ear  open,  ever  ready  to  give  the 
alarm  on  behalf  both  of  the  family  and  the  race  ? 

Ann  Hutchinson's  mind  was  evidently  such  a  mind.  It 
was  a  Cassandra  mind,  daring  to  search,  to  find,  to  judge 
for  itself.  In  the  sacred  scriptures  she  perceived  some- 
thing that  the  deeply  religious  men  about  her  were  not 
perceiving,  and  she  wanted  to  point  it  out,  to  bring  it  to 
the  front,  to  compel  to  it  Christian  attention.  But  the 
jealous,  despotic  Puritan  manhood  would  not  have  it  so. 
It  would  not  tolerate  that  a  "  mere "  wife  and  mother 
should  study,  and  think,  and  suggest.  Consequently  her 
teaching,  her  prestige,  yea,  her  very  self,  must  be  destroyed 
out  of  the  infant  colony. 

Destroyed  accordingly  they  were — and  in  this  world 
we  shall  never  know  what  Asiatic  and  European  Christen- 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  125 

dom  would  have  become  had  not  the  Apostle  Paul 
'  silenced  "  the  women  saints  in  the  newly-born  Christian 
churches,  nor  how  New  England  religion  would  have 
evolved  had  not  the  Massachusetts  clergy  so  ruthlessly 
(lone  the  same  thing  to  the  winning  and  illuminated 
Mistress  Ann  Hutchinson;  but  Trinitarian  women  can  at 
least  maintain  that  the  results  could  not  have  been  worse 
than  they  actually  were,  for  European  Christendom  shaped 
itself  into  the  Papacy,  and  after  the  American  Revolution 
nearly  all  the  light  and  leading  of  New  England  reacted 
from  the  now  intolerable  Calvinism  into  Unitarianism ! 

Ah,  not  in  the  hold  of  the  sacred  Mayflower  with  the 
gentle  Pilgrims  was  borne  across  the  sea  the  dragon-egg 
of  future  enmity  to  Jesus — but  on  the  ships  that  were 
bound  for  Boston  its  militant  masculinism  hid  in  the  truly 
though  imperfectly  converted  heart  of  the  mighty  Puritan 
Manhood  Itself ! 

For  it  is  given  to  no  man,  not  even  men  so  God-seeking 
and  God-loyal  as  the  Puritan  colonists,  to  get  outside  the 
spirit  of  their  own  age.  Sixteen  hundred  years  after 
Christ  and  his  apostles  did  these  colonists  live — yet  the 
Bible  translators  of  their  day  rendered  into  English  St. 
Paul's  divine  Praise  of  Love  as  though  it  were  a  Praise 
of  Charity! 

Not  even  yet  had  the  human  mind  apprehended  and 
grasped  the  Gospel  of  Love  according  to  Jesus ! 

But  that  in  our  youthful  century  the  human  mind  is  at 
last  responding  to  the  inner  soul  of  this  Gospel,  the  fol- 
lowing American  lyrics  may,  I  think,  be  taken  as  evidence 
— the  first  of  them  surely  a  vibration  down  from  the 
Divine  Christ,  and  the  second  as  surely  one  from  the 
Divine  Spirit! 


126  NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

AFTER  THE  BATTLE. 
By  O.  Henry. 

These  lines  were  found  written  on  scraps  of  paper  in  their  author's 
room  after  his  death — the  last  he  ever  penned. 

Hard  ye  may  be  in  the  tumult, 
Red  to  your  battle  hilts; 
Blow  give  blow  in  the  foray, 
Cunningly  ride  in  the  tilts. 
But  when  the  battle  is  over, 
Tenderly,  unbeguiled — 
Turn  to  a  woman  a  woman's 
Heart  and  a  child's  to  a  child. 

Test  of  the  man  if  his  worth  be 

In  accord  with  the  ultimate  plan 

That  he  be  not,  to  his  marring, 

Always  and  utterly  man. 

That  he  may  bring  out  of  the  tumult, 

Fitter  and  undefiled, 

To  woman  the  heart  of  a  woman — 

To  children  the  heart  of  a  child. 

Good  when  the  bugles  are  shrilling 
It  is  to  be  iron  and  fire. 
Good  to  be  oak  in  the  foray — 
Tee  at  a  guilty  desire. 
But,  when  the  battle  is  over 
And  back  ye  ride  from  the  wild, 
Give  to  a  woman  a  woman's 
Heart  and  a  child's  to  a  child. 


NEW   YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  127 

SONG  OF  THE  TRUE  WOMAN. 
By  Coletta  Ryan 

In  my  opinion  this  poem  is  not  only  the  most  beautiful  poem  about 
woman  ever  written,  but  also  the  most  beautiful  that  in  this  world 
ever  will  or  can  be  written  about  her. — M.  F.  P. 

By  permission  of  the  author  and  of  the  New  York  "Independent." 

"Who  am  If" 

I'm  a  star  in  the  sky. 
I'm  the  far-rolling  sea  and  a  wide-spreading  tree, 
A  delicate  rose  and  good  will  that  flows 
All  over   the  earth.     Irresistible  mirth, 

Happy  laughter  am  I, 

Silent  weeping  am  I. 
I'm  the  moon  mildly  gleaming,  the  sun  kindly  beaming, 
And  all  in  one  breath  do  I  blow  away  death — 

O  a  heartful  of  feeling  am  I : 

I'm  compassion  and  strength,  and  my  breadth  and  my  length 
Is  from  meadow  to  meadow; — look!  there  is  my  shadow — 
Follow  fast  if  you  choose  me,  because  you  may  lose  me. 

O  subtle  am  I, 

And  elusive  am  I — 
I'm  the  ghost  of  your  brother,  the  heart  of  your  mother, 

And  Sympathy's  spirit  am  I! 

Oh,  I  must  unravel  my  soul  as  I  travel, 

Myself  must  I  be,  so  full-hearted  and  free. 

I  must  lean  forth  and  sing  since  I'm  one  with  the  spring!— 

For  your  smiles  and  your  tears,  your  woes  and  your  fears, 
I  establish  my  song,  genial,  tender  and  strong. 


128  NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

I  live  for  the  lover,  the  rambler,  the  rover, 

The  maiden  who  dances,  the  youth  and  his  fancies, 

The  rich  man,  the  poor  man,  the  pioneer  woodman, 

For  the  light  on  the  altar,  and  those  who  may  falter, 

My  flame  can  not  scorch,  I  am  Love's  fairest  torch, 

And  I  prize  you  all  so  that  I  must  tell  you  so. 

It  is  sweet  to  say  so,  though  you  doubt  me,  you  know! 

Cold  custom  has  made  you  so  close  with  your  words 
That  you  contradict  nature.    The  generous  birds 
Tell  you  daily  how  cherished  you  are — 
Why  not  I,  for  the  truth  is  not  far? 
But  you're  all  so  afraid  of  the  self  that  God  made 
If  His  angel  should  show  it,  I  doubt  if  you'd  know  it! 
Follow  fast,  I  am  going,  the  west  wind  is  blowing — 
Sympathetic  am  I,  through  all  seasons  I  hear 
Your  well-hidden  sigh  in  my  finely  trained  ear. 

0  hark  how  the  children  alone  in  the  lane 

Are  calling  and  ^calling. — I  hear  through  the  rain. 
Follow  fast  if  you  choose  me,  because  you  may  lose  me, 

For  subtle  am  I, 

And  elusive  am  I, 
I'm  the  ghost  of  your  brother,  the  heart  of  your  mother, 

And  Sympathy's  spirit  am  I! 

Dear  comrades,  a  word  ere  I  leave  you ; 

1  come  not  to   fool   and   deceive  you. 

I  come  to  make  pleasant  the  future  and  present — 
O  the  wings  of  your  longing  am  I ! 

Am  I, 

Simple  I, 
Like  the  bird  in  the  tree,  I  am  sorrow  and  glee. 
Something  near,  something  far,  like  a  rose  or  a  star; 
But  always  so  true  with  a  fond  prayer  for  you ! 

0  I  roam  on  the  hill  of  immortal  Good  Will, 

With  the  friends  God  has  given  me  out  of  his  heaven. 

1  am  youth,  I  am  hope,  on  this  beautiful  slope, 


NEW  YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  129 

And  I  carry  my  light  through  the  deeps  of  the  night. 
I  am  love  and  good  cheer,  and  the  spring  of  the  year — 
O  a  heartful  of  feeling  am  I ! 

"Who  am  I?" 

I'm  a  star  in  the  sky— 
The  far-rolling  sea  and  a  wide-spreading  tree; 
A  delicate  rose  and  good  nature  that  flows 
All  over  the  earth.    Irresistible  mirth, 

Joyous  laughter  am  I, 

Silent  weeping  am  I, 
I'm  the  moon  silver  gleaming,  the  sun  golden  beaming, 
And  all  in  one  breath  do  I  blow  away  death — 

O  just  a  true  woman  am  II 


END   OF   PART   II. 


L 


PART  III 


THE  DISCORD  VS.  THE  CONCORD. 


L 


PART  III. 
THE  DISCORD  VS.  THE  CONCORD. 

Prelude  1 

WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  THE  UNIVERSE? 

I     Question   One :      "  What's   Wrong   with 

the  Universe  ?  "   1 

WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  THE  WORLD? 

II    Question  Two:     "What's  Wrong  with 

the  World?" 2 

III  Question  Two:     "What's  Wrong  with 

the  World  ?  "  Continued 8 

IV  Question  Two :     "  What's  Wrong  with 

the  World  ?  "  Continued 18 

V    Question  Two :     "  What's   Wrong  with 

the  World  ?  "  Continued 27 

VI     Question  Two :     "  What's  Wrong  with 

the  World  ?  "  Continued 33 

VII     Question  Two:     "What's  Wrong  with 

the  World  ?  "  Concluded 38 


WHAT'S  WRONG  Vi^ITH  NEW  YORK? 

VIII     Question  Three :     "  What's  Wrong  with 

New  York?"    45 

IX     Question  Three :     "  What's  Wrong  with 

New  York  ?  "  Continued 55 

X     Question  Three :    "  What's  Wrong  with 

New  York?  "  Concluded 69 

XI     The  "  Bible  "  and  the  '"  Bishop  "  CiviUza- 

tions  77 

XII     Catholic   Foreignism  vs,   American   Co- 

Education 84 

XIII  More  "  Bishop  "  Civilization  88 

XIV  The  Ward  and  Election  District  Systems 

"  Must  Go  " 96 

XV    A  Philosopher's  Political  Diagnosis 100 

XVI     Memphis    105 

XVII     The  Way  to  Do  It 109 

XVIII    A  New  Patriotic  Association 115 

A  NEW  POLITICAL  PARTY. 

XIX    A  New  Political  Party 118 

XX     Proposed  Planks  for  the  New  Party  ...  120 

XXI    The  Last  Word 164 

Appendix  A  171 

Appendix  B   179 


WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  THE 
UNIVERSE? 


NEW  YORK: 

A    SYMPHONIC    STUDY. 
PART  III.— THE  DISCORD  VS.  THE  CONCORD. 


PRELUDE. 

Probably  every  American  who  thinks,  at  some  time  or 
other  asks  himself  these  questions: — 

I.     "What's  wrong  with  the  Universe?" 
II.     "What's  wrong  with  the  World?" 

III.  "What's  wrong  with  the  City  of  New  York — and 
resultantly  with  the  giant  Republic  which  as  its  financial 
and  therefore  its  social  centre  New  York  so  tremendously 
influences?" 

Beginning  imth  the  first,  the  answers  to,  these  inquiries 
ivill  summarise  all  that  has  been  said  or  implied  in  the 
preceding  pages  as  penned  between  1890  and  1905 — the 
form  of  this^  finale,  though  not  its  substance,  having  been 
suggested  by  the  title  of  the  deep  and  brilliant  Mr.  Gilbert 
K.  Chesterton's  "What's  wrong  with  the  World?" 


CHAPTER  I. 
QUESTION  one:    ''what's  wrong  with  the  universe?" 

The  "wrong"  in  the  universe  is  that  the  supernal  arch- 
angel Lucifer  grew  weary  of  the  Law  of  Love  of  that 
universe  as  given  to  it  for  its  own  happiness  by  the  God 
of  Love  who  created  it,  and  introduced  instead  the  Law 
of  Self  as  the  moral  axis  of  his  own  being  and  that  of 
all  who  sided  with  him.  This  revolt  transformed  Lucifer 
from  the  moral  and  intellectual  Light-bearer  for  Deity, 
into  Satan,  the  moral  and  intellectual  Hinderer  against 
Deity,  and  similarly  all  his  followers  from  Angels  of 
Bliss  into  Demons  of  Bale. 

The  Omnipotent  Trinity  did  not  destroy  Satan  and  his 
following  for  the  schism  and  disorder  thus  introduced 
into  their  divine  universe.  Being  absolutely  without  pos- 
sibility of  jealousy,  and  concerned  only  for  the  triumph 
of  the  Truth,  Triune  Deity  continued  to  maintain  in 
existence  these  rebels  against  Love  in  order  that  they 
might  do  their  utmost  to  make  good  their  cause — even 
bestowing  upon  Satan  a  battle-ground  of  his  own,  where, 
in  the  most  favorable  conditions  and  in  sight  of  the  whole 
universe  he  might  carry  out  his  principle  to  lasting  vic- 
tory and  domination  if  he  could. 

This  battle-ground  is  the  human  heart  of  our  own  race 
as  its  successive  generations  occupy  this  beautiful  earth. 
When  the  invariable  experience  of  the  ages  shall  have 
demonstrated  that  the  Self-principle  of  Satan  brings 
forth — not  the  power  and  beauty  and  triumph  which  col- 


NEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  3 

lectively  are  Life,  but  only  the  weakness,  ugliness,  suf- 
fering and  failure  which  collectively  are  Death — then 
Satan  and  his  following  will  of  their  own  accord  abandon 
the  Law  of  Self;  they  will  repent  of  and  ask  to  be  for- 
given for  the  monstrous  wrong  and  evil  they  have 
wrought;  the  Divine  Son,  to  whom  alone  belongs  the  re- 
storation of  the  immortality  originally  conferred  by  the 
Divine  Father  upon  every  angelic  and  human  spirit,  will 
from  his  own  life  rekindle  in  each  penitent  the  dead  soul 
which  Self  had  killed;  the  Divine  Mother  will  renew 
and  remould  that  soul  after  the  Divine  Image  and  Like- 
ness originally  intended;  the  original  harmony  and 
heaven  of  the  Universe  of  Stars  and  Souls  will  reappear 
and  will  thenceforth  go  on  from  Bliss  to  Bliss  and  from 
Glory  to  Glory  in  an  infinite  progression  which  shall 
know  no  end. 

Every  human  soul,  therefore,  who  on  this  earth  and 
in  this  life  allies  itself  with  Triune  Deity  and  their  Law 
of  Love,  or  the  "Thou,"  not  only  secures  its  own  heaven- 
future,  but  by  that  much  shortens  the  suffering  of  Triune 
Deity  for  and  with  their  sinning  and  therefore  suffering 
creatures,  and  hastens  the  restoration  and  progress  of  the 
universe ;  and  every  human  soul  who  on  this  earth  and  in 
this  life  adopts  for  its  rule  of  conduct  the  Law  of  Self,  or 
the  "I,"  allies  itself  with  Satan,  dooms  itself  to  Satanic 
suffering  and  deterioration,  and  prolongs  the  immeasur- 
able pain  and  sorrow  of  Triune  Deity  and  equally  of  the 
human  race  for  whose  love  and  co-operation  that  Deity 
has  for  ages  been  morally  contending  with  the  Arch- 
enemy of  both — "not  by  might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  my 
Spirit,  saith  the  Lord!" 


WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  THE 
WORLD? 


CHAPTER  II. 

QUESTION  two:    "what's  wrong  with  the  world?" 

By  one  who  believes  that  in  placing  humanity  upon  the 
earth,  there  on  behalf  of  Heaven-happiness  to  wage  the 
battle  of  the  Authors  of  Joy,  otherwise  Triune  Deity, 
against  the  Author  of  Pain  or  Lucifer,  otherwise  Satan — 
it  can  not  be  doubted  that  the  loving-tenderness  of  Tri- 
une Deity  intended  for  humanity  an  equal  and  mutually 
considerate  Brother-and-Sisterhood  throughout  all  its  life 
relations. 

This  being  so — the  first  and  foremost  thing  "wrong" 
with  the  world  is  that  after  the  tragedy  of  Eden,  Satan, 
the  better  to  block  and  defeat  Deity,  impelled  the  stronger 
of  the  exiled  pair  to  withhold  this  fraternity  from  his 
physically  weaker  sister  who  had  now  also  become  his 
wife,  and  thereby  to  create  from  the  beginning  two  great 
social  castes — the  Superior  or  Manhood  Caste,  and  the 
Inferior  or  Womanhood  Caste — which  castes  have  been 
and  in  the  main  still  are  coextensive  with  human  society. 
Furthermore,  not  content  with  this  grievous  humiliation, 
as  time  went  on  this  same  "stronger"  devoted  throughout 
the  ages  an  endless  procession  of  girls  and  youthful 
women  to  a  personal  desecration  which  inflicts  upon  its 
victims  intellectual  decadence,  moral  depravity,  loathsome 
disease,  and  untimely  death. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  S 

The  long  persistent  agitation  of  a  handful  of  women 
for  the  manhood  suffrage  is  a  blind  exasperated  effort 
to  throw  off  on  the  one  hand  this  unnatural  domination 
of  the  World-sister  by  the  World-brother,  and  on  the 
many  thousands  of  every  girl-generation  that  comes  upon 
the  stage  of  adult  life, 
other  to  stop  his  devilish  and  inexcusable  immolation  of 

The  American  manhood  that  will  now  accept  and  con- 
duct itself  in  accordance  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine 
Eternal  Feminine  as  expounded  in  Part  II  of  this  work, 
will  eventually  accomplish  that  Prevention  and  conse- 
quent Cure  of  the  Social  Evil  which  was  the  sole  motive 
of  its  writing. 

For  if  men  believed  that  Collective  Womanhood  on 
earth  is  intended  to  image  the  Infinite  Ineffable  Heaven- 
mother  veiled  to  us  throughout  Holy  Scripture  as  the 
"Spirit,"  even  as  Collective  Manhood  upon  earth  images 
or  reflects  the  Illimitable  Omnipotent  Heaven-manhood 
revealed  to  us  as  the  "Father"  and  the  "Son" — such  a 
conception  of  womanhood  would  raise  the  World-sister 
to  such  dignity  and  sacredness  that  the  sealing  of  any 
woman  to  sex  infamy  would  thereafter  be  as  unthinkable 
to  the  World-brother  as  now  is  and  long  has  been  the 
similar  crime  against  the  youth  of  his  own  sex  which  yet 
in  the  ancient  pagan  civilizations  was  as  much  a  matter  of 
course  as  are  kept  mistresses  among  rich  men  now. 

This  transformed  World-brother  will  rank  first  on  the 
list  of  crimes,  not  murder,  as  did  Moses,  but  sex-lawless- 
ness, as  did  Jesus  and  the  Spirit*,  and  will  make  swift 

*  Mark  10:19,  Luke  18-20,  Acts  16:20,  28,  29. 


6  A  Ely    YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

death  by  court  martial  the  penalty  of  violent  assault  and 
equally  of  pandering  and  of  procuring.  He  will  so  brand 
and  socially  bar  the  profligate  and  the  seducer,  that  no 
sister  of  his  will  marry  such  a  man  any  more  than  she 
would  a  leper.  He  will  cease  the  exploitation  of  the 
woman  form,  of  the  nude  for  the  nude's  sake,  which  on 
the  stage,  in  the  studio,  and  as  far  as  possible  in  dress — 
has  now,  through  the  influence  and  leading  of  licentious 
France,  taken  such  flamboyant  possession  of  present-day 
Christendom  and  is  so  terribly  lowering  its  morals.  In- 
stead of  scorning  and  refusing,  as  heretofore,  to  meet 
his  World-sister  on  the  Plane  of  the  Mind,  he  will  both 
invite  and  will  seek  her  comradeship  throughout  his 
schools  and  colleges,  and  in  this  new  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual communion  will  confer  on  her  and  realize  for  him- 
self a  bliss,  a  happiness,  a  gayety  and  an  inspiration  that 
on  the  Plane  of  the  Body  her  society  never  held  nor  ever 
could  properly  bestow. 

On  her  side,  the  coming  World-sister  will  so  study  and 
possess  herself  of  the  Law  and  Secret  of  Beauty  both  in 
mind  and  person,  that  when  she  becomes  a  wife  her 
lover-husband  shall  never  be  either  disappointed  in  or 
sated  by  her  fascinations.  Age  will  not  wither  nor  cus- 
tom stale  her  infinite  variety,  but  she  will  embody  to  him 
always  The  Beautiful  because  she  will  he  "beautiful"  not 
only  in  person  but  beautiful  also  in  soul,  beautiful  in 
manners,  beautiful  in  motive,  beautiful  above  all,  in  her 
love — the  supreme  want,  the  hunger,  the  craving  of  man- 
hood with  reference  to  womanhood  being  always  and 
ever  Love  enshrined  in  Beauty,  even  as  the  supreme  want 
of  womanhood  with  reference  to  manhood  is  always  and 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  7 

ever  Achievement  enshrined  in  Strength.  So  dull,  so 
crass,  are  the  men  who  say  and  who  believe — "Every  true 
woman  wants  her  master!"  No  woman,  true  or  sham, 
wants  "her"  master,  but  every  woman  does  want  the  man 
she  loves  to  be  a  master — a  strength — and  therefore  a 
success — in  something. 

"I  saw  Othello's  visage  in  his  mind, 
And  to  his  honors  and  his  valiant  parts 
Did  I  my  soul  and  fortunes  consecrate." 

So  said  the  snowy  Desdemona  of  her  swarthy  wooer; 
and,  conversely,  the  dramatist  Gilbert  assures  us  in  his 
"Esmeralda"  that 

"...    man's  heart  is  in  his  eye, 
His  love  must  have  its  daily  food  or  die," 

beauty  throughout  the  universe  being  next  to  love  as  the 
source  of  joy,  and  love  itself,  without  beauty,  being  so 
incomplete  as  to  be  subliminally  conscious  of  tragedy. 

Therefore,  to  be  worthy  of  that  consideration  and 
companionship  and  devotion  of  the  World-brother  which 
is  woman's  very  life,  let  the  new  World-sister  resolve  that 
whatever  human  relations  toward  him  successively  are 
hers — whether  mother  or  grandmother,  whether  sister  or 
friend,  whether  bride  or  wife  or  daughter — in  each  one 
to  express  the  beauty  appropriate  to  its  ideal — in  each 
one  to  be  beautiful  according  to  its  possibility. 


CHAPTER  III. 
"what's  wrong  with  the  world?" — Continued. 

The  second  thing  absolutely  and  terrifically  wrong  with 
our  present-day  world  is — that  with  the  advent  of  steam- 
machinery,  Upper-class  Womanhood  became  and  thus 
far  has  remained,  Parasitic  Womanhood. 

If  then  the  coming  World-sister  shall  prove  so  wise 
with  reference  to  her  World-brother  as  for  his  joy  and 
happiness  to  study  and  conquer  the  Feminine  Art  of  Fas- 
cination— equally  must  she  so  study  and  conquer  the 
Feminine  Art  of  Housekeeping  as  to  be  able  to  welcome 
him  at  the  close  of  each  day  to  a  home  of  thrift  and  skill 
and  charm  and  therefore  of  noble  peace  and  satisfaction ; 
for  let  her  be  never  so  fair  in  person,  never  so  lovely  in 
character,  never  so  exquisite  in  gifts,  the  World-sister 
can  not  and  she  will  not  take  her  intended  God-given 
place  as  the  equal  companion  and  world-power  with  her 
World-brother,  unless  in  the  new  modern  conditions  she 
shall  find  and  fill  a  Money- Value  Sphere  as  indispensable 
to  his  modern  comfort  and  prosperity  as  in  its  day  was 
her  ancient  and  once  universal  Sphere  of  the  Household 
Industries. 

Can  she,  unaided  and  uncounselled  by  him,  find  and 
fill  such  a  sphere  ? 

My  fear  is  that  she  can  not— or,  more  probably,  that 
she  will  not. 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  g 

For  in  the  eighteen-sixties,  when  the  writer  was  a 
young  married  woman — as  well  as  she  could  she  set  her- 
self to  study  the  true  causes  of  the  African  Slavery,  the 
controversy  over  which  had  resulted  in  the  then  raging 
Civil  War.  Certain  conclusions  became  clear  to  her, 
which,  scientific  fashion,  she  wanted  to  verify  extensively 
and  then  embody  in  a  book;  but  the  daily  detail  of  her 
housekeeping,  simple  as  it  was,  seemed  to  be  ever  in  her  way. 

Was  housekeeping,  then,  she  asked  herself,  in  which 
women  at  that  time  were  and  through  all  time  previous 
had  been  almost  universally  engaged,  the  reason  why 
woman  as  a  sex  had  achieved  so  mortifyingly  little  in 
the  boundless  realm  of  thought  wherein  the  World- 
brother  had  made  so  many  and  such  dazzling  conquests? 
Ceasing  to  interest  herself  in  the  Black  Man,  she  turned 
her  attention  to  the  White  Woman,  as  from  her  fifteenth 
year  she  had  intended  eventually  some  day  to  do. 

Vast  and  grim  and  tragic  were  the  stern  realities  which 
from  the  mists  of  her  ignorance  took  shape  before  her! 
Two  of  them  in  especial  so  dominated  the  others  that 
adequately  to  appreciate  them  was  easily  to  account  for 
all  the  rest. 

One  was  that  the  men  had  won  all  the  triumphs  and 
were  having  and  holding  all  the  money-making  and  honor- 
bestowing  places  in  the  world,  because  as  a  sex  they 
were  politically  and  intellectually  and  industrially  banded 
and  organized  together.  Their  achievements  were 
stupendous,  god-like;  but  they  had  come  about  through 
one  principle  and  one  alone — the  principle  of  working 
together.  Modern  men  were  serried  in  laboring  armies 
under  Captains  and  Colonels  and  Generals  of  Industry 


V 

10  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

who  had  thought  out  myriads  of  problems  and  methods 
and  had  discovered  and  planned  and  provided  the 
ways  and  means  by  which  the  masses  could  earn  their 
living  and  at  the  same  time  make  life  and  the  world  more 
and  more  comfortable — more  and  more  interesting — more 
and  more  beantiful. 

Modern  women,  on  the  other  hand,  from  the  top  to 
the  bottom,  were  just  what  ancient  women  had  always 
been:  simply  Units — units  as  absolutely  disconnected 
among  themselves  as  so  many  bullets  in  a  bag.  All  of 
them  kept  house  who  had  houses  to  keep  (and  fifty  years 
ago  most  American  women  did  have  houses  to  keep)  ; 
but  no  housekeeper  combined  with  other  housekeepers 
to  run  her  house  more  economically  or  perfectly  than  she 
was  running  it  alone.  No  wonder  that  as  a  sex  women 
had  no  money !  About  one-seventh  of  them  owned  prop- 
erty left  them  by  father  or  by  spouse ;  the  rest,  though 
forever  working  industriously  with  their  hands,  were 
practically  so  penniless  that  few  could  give  away  a  dollar 
without  the  permission  of  the  male  head  of  the  family. 

As  the  homemakers  of  the  land,  my  countrywomen 
were  carrying  on  within  their  own  walls,  besides  lesser 
industries,  three  main  trades,  Cooking,  Laundering,  and 
Sewing,  which  are  no  more  affiliated  than  are  Carpen- 
tering and  Blacksmithing  and  Gardening;  yet  many 
housekeepers  were  passably  skilful  in  each  of  these  call- 
ings, and  some  housekeepers  were  very  skilful  in  all 
three.  How  absurd  for  all  women,  whatever  their  tastes 
and  talents,  to  be  all  doing  the  same  thing!  Inevitably 
there  was  much  waste;  inevitably  there  was  much  im- 
perfection;   inevitably    there    was    much    heartbreak    of 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  n 

square  women  martyred  for  life  into  round  holes,  and  of 
square  holes  but  partly  filled  by  round  women;  but  this 
was  only  what  was  to  be  expected,  since  there  were  no 
Generals  or  Colonels  or  Captains  of  Housekeeping  who 
were  organizing  all  other  housekeepers  into  a  magnificent 
and  respected  and  self-respecting  Solidarity  of  Woman- 
hood comparable  with  the  magnificent  and  respected  and 
self-respecting  Solidarity  of  Manhood  with  its  wide 
choice  of  occupations  suited  to  the  special  gift  or  ambi- 
tion of  any  and  every  individual  within  its  ranks. 

Moreover,  this  banding  together  of  men  and  this  non- 
banding  together  of  women  on  behalf  of  the  industrial 
and  achieving  purposes  of  life  accounted  also  for  the  most 
humiliating  and  therefore  most  afflicting  modern  woman- 
hood fact  next  after  the  Social  Evil — the  fact  that  Civili- 
zation, while  ever  uplifting  and  advancing  and  glorifying 
manhood,  has  ever  relatively  lowered  and  belittled  wom- 
anhood. 

For  though  wives  and  mothers  must  more  or  less,  and 
do — rise  with  their  fathers  and  husbands  in  the  scale  of 
intelligence  and  refinement,  they  have  never  yet  risen 
with  them  in  the  scale  of  importance.  Collective  man- 
hood, because  it  is  collective  manhood,  can  and  does  soar 
ever  higher  and  higher  into  the  empyrean  of  Thought 
and  Achievement,  while  Unit  Womanhood,  because  it  is 
"unit"  womanhood,  remains  on  the  far-below  manual 
labor  level  upon  which  both  sexes  started. 

Consequently  the  World-brother  can  not  value  his 
World-sister  to-day  as  he  did  when  he  too  was  in  the 
industrial  unit-stage  and  was  personally  tilling  his  fields 
and  tending  his  stock   and  bringing   in   to   her   the   raw 


T2  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

materials  which  she  personally  manufactured  into  his 
personal  food  and  clothing.  Her  hand  labors  are  no 
longer  necessary  to  the  comfort  of  her  super-civilized, 
because  super-organized,  companion.  He  can  and  does 
pay  great  working  classes  to  forestall  his  every  want. 
Mentally,  intellectually,  collectively,  she  plays  so  tiny  a 
part  in  his  tremendous  practical  universe  that  she  might 
be  swept  completely  out  of  it  and,  if  so  he  willed,  it  could 
go  on  much  the  same  as  before ! 

The  second  grim  discovery  which  acutely  alarmed  the 
writer,  was  that  this  mighty  manhood  army  was  forever 
demanding  new  worlds  to  conquer,  and  that,  not  satis- 
fied with  its  own  "all-outdoors,"  it  was  invading  the 
feminine  ail-indoors — had  already  taken  away  from  it 
the  spinning  and  weaving  and  knitting,  had  just  launched 
the  machine  that  would  certainly  pre-empt  the  sewing, 
and  had  started  the  bakery,  the  canning  factory,  and  the 
steam  laundry  as  the  advance  battalions  against  "home" 
cooking  and  washing  and  ironing.  Yet  with  the  home 
industries  gone,  what  would  become  of  the  women-hosts 
whose  foremothers,  by  inventing  and  practising  them 
had  for  ages  kept  the  home  roofs  over  their  heads  and 
the  home  ties  about  their  hearts  ? 

In  great  foreign  capitals  the  wage  of  the  working-girls 
averaged  but  fifty  cents  a  day.  Unable  to  live  on  it,  their 
expenses  were  met  by  the  bachelor  youths  who  shared 
their  rooms.  It  had  to  be.  They  could  not  help  them- 
selves. But  was  this,  alas,  to  be  what  the  lowly  but 
virginal  American  maidens  who  hitherto  had  only  left 
their  fathers*  roofs  to  go  to  those  of  their  husbands  must 
come  to  ? 


AEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC   STUDY.  13 

Therefore  in  some  articles  entitled  "Co-operative 
Housekeeping"  which  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
in  1868-69  and  the  next  year  were  collected  into  a  littte 
book  by  an  Edinburgh  publisher — and  again  in  a  second 
little  work,  "Co-operative  Housekeeping:  Hozv  not  to  Do 
It  and  How  to  Do  It"  as  published  in  Boston  in  1884 — 
the  writer  urged  that  modern  women  should  thenceforth 
adopt  the  method  of  modern  men,  and,  starting  from 
housekeeping  as  their  womanhood  foothold,  even  as  men 
had  started  from  farming  as  their  manhood  foothold, 
should  commit  themselves  to  this  divine  and  mighty  prin- 
ciple of  "working  together"  and  should  inaugurate 
Stock-company  or'  "Co-operative"  Housekeeping  by  imi- 
tating the  then  little  known  but  now  world-renowned 
Rochdale  Co-operative  Store  as  founded  by  a  small  com- 
pany of  weavers  in  Rochdale,  England,  in  1842,  and 
which,  even  at  the  date  when  I  first  wrote  (1868)  could 
point  to  a  successful  career  of  a  quarter  of  a  century 
and  to  a  multitude  of  successful  imitators  which  had 
sprung  up  throughout  Great  Britain.  The  figures  of  this 
movement  for  1913  give  the  number  of  its  stores  as 
over  thirteen  hundred,  their  membership  as  over  three 
millions,  and  their  annual  trade  as  over  six  hundred 
millions  of  dollars.  Pretty  safe  guides,  such  Stores,  one 
would  say,  for  any  and  all  housekeepers  and  home-makers 
willing  to  reduce  family  expenses  by  increasing  family 
savings ! 

Much  interest  among  the  women  readers  of  the  At- 
lantic, and  a  few  short-lived  attempts  at  Co-operative 
Housekeeping  resulted  from  the  articles.  They  all  failed 
because   though    we   had   adopted   the   principles   of   the 


14  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Rochdale  Pioneers  we  did  not  follow  their  method.  We 
did  not  know  it.  I  myself  did  not  know  it  and  had  not 
given  it  in  the  Atlantic.  In  my  second  little  work  fifteen 
years  later,  therefore,  the  Rochdale  modus  operandi  was 
so  fully  set  forth  that  failure  would  be  impossible  to 
any  band  of  women  intelligent  and  united  enough  to  put 
it  in  practise. 

But  though  to  this  book  important  New  York  and  Bos- 
ton papers  gave  notices  so  spacious  that  a  veteran  critic 
congratulated  the  writer  on  its  "success,"  yet  were  they 
all  so  dubious  or  so  disapproving  that  no  woman  reading 
them  would  thtnk  of  buying  it.  Also,  immediately  after 
its  appearance  its  Boston  publisher  failed  and  its  small 
edition  was  put  on  sale  and  disposed  of  only  in  that  city. 
I  might  have  sought  and  found  another  publisher  for 
the  work  but  for  the  fact  that  about  the  same  time  I 
became  so  submerged  by  other  demands  that  for  years 
I  practically  forgot  all  about  it. 

Within  the  twelvemonth  after  its  appearance,  however, 
Edward  Bellamy,  of  Boston,  published  his  famous  "Look- 
ing  Backward/'  which  had  an  immense  vogue  because  of 
its  vision  of  a  frictionless  and  faultless  push-the-button 
housekeeping — though  whether  devised  and  operated  by 
man  or  by  woman  the  gifted  visionist  vouchsafed  not. 
It  is  said  that  Bellamy  wrote  this  book  in  collaboration 
with  a  literary  Irishman  noted  for  his  literary  borrow- 
ings; and  as  .previous  to  "Looking  Backward''  its  author 
had  shown  no  evidence  of  any  interest  in  sociology,  it 
is  perhaps  natural  for  me  to  flatter  myself  that  in  some 
way   my   plea   for  organized    (and   therefore   perfected) 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  15 

housekeeping  had  been  brought  into  the  focus  of  the  Bel- 
lamy imagination. 

Since  that  time  "Co-operative  Housekeeping"  has 
floated  a  homeless  phrase  about  the  American  conscious- 
ness but  has  not  yet  seriously  settled  itself  to  take  root. 
The  few  literary  women  who  have  commented  upon  the 
theory  have  mostly  opposed  it  on  the  ground  that  it 
threatened  the  home,  whereas  it  is  in  fact  the  only  pos- 
sible method  by  which  the  home  can  be  saved. 

About  the  year  1894  a  philanthropist  friend — the  late 
Miss  Catherine  Spence,  of  Adelaide,  South  Australia — 
gave  the  copy  of  my  second  book  which  I  had  given  to 
herself,  to  the  highly  intelligent  Mrs.  Charlotte  Perkins 
Stetson  (now  Oilman).  A  few  years  later  this  very 
active  lecturer  and  writer  came  out  as  a  sociologist,  and 
besides  using  as  her  own  and  accepting  credit  for  the 
scientfic  diagnosis  of  housekeeping  conditions  which, 
previous  to  my  own  brief  writings  on  the  subject,  can  not 
be  found  in  print,*  Mrs.  Oilman  has  done  her  utmost 
to  disallow  and  kill  my  proposition  that  modern  woman- 
hood should  collectively  take  arms  against  the  sea  of 
forces  now  battering  down  the  home  and  through  organ- 
ized housekeeping  overcome  and  rout  them ! 

Far  from  deploring,  Mrs.  Oilman  welcomes  the  man- 
hood invaders  who  for  the  sake  of  the  manhood  pocket 
are  taking  away  from  the  home  one  industry  after  an- 
other— because,  she  maintains,  "they  free  the  wife  from 
so  much  housework  that  she  is  able  to  give  her  chief 


*  "Who  steals  my  purse  steals  trash";   who  steals  my  ideas  steals  a 
portion  of  my  living  soul  and  is  the  most  intolerable  of  thieves! 


i6  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

attention  to  outside  wage-earning!"  Yet  a  "home" — 
yet  family  life — is  the  vital,  absolutely  indispensable  this- 
world  need  for  every  v^oman  worthy  of  the  name.  And 
why?  Because  home  is  the  only  place  wherein  she  has 
a  "right"  to  love  and  be  loved.  Without  home-love,  life 
to  womanhood  is  the  "pain  but  not  the  peace  of  death." 
Take  it  away  from  women — make  them  live  without  the 
anchoring  ties  of  father,  mother,  sister,  brother,  hus- 
band, child — and  in  the  long  run  their  standards  and  ideals 
must  and  will  go  down.  That  an  intelligent  woman  should 
seek  to  make  other  women  undervalue  and  repudiate 
housekeeping  and  home-making  seems  to  me  a  crime  al- 
most past  praying  for.  One  is  reminded  of  King  Solo- 
mon's— "The  mise  woman  huildeth  her  house;  the  foolish 
plucketh  it  down  with  her  hands!" 

In  1908,  after  reading  a  scathing  arraignment  of  pres- 
ent-day womanhood  in  the  "Sex  and  Society"  of  the  dis- 
tinguished sociologist,  Prof.  W.  I.  Thomas,  of  Chicago, 
I  sent  him  a  copy  of  the  book  from  which,  without  men- 
tioning either  it  or  its  author,  Mrs.  Oilman  had  equally 
borrowed  and  dissented,  and  received  from  him  the 
following  letter : 

University  of  Chicago, 

December  8,  1908. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Peirce  : 

I  assure  you  I  have  read  your  book  with  great  pleasure  and 
profit.  I  think  you  saw  a  number  of  things  and  said  them 
before  anyone  else.  I  think  the  book  is  wonderfully  inter- 
esting and  shows  a  scientific  grasp  of  things.  I  wonder  if 
it  has  been  widely  read.  It  seems  to  me  that  if  it  had  been 
gotten   out  in   a  diflPerent   form,  and   perhaps   hy   a    different 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  17 

publisher,   it   would   have   had   a   wider   notice.     I    was   sur- 
prised that  I  had  never  met  so  important  a  book  myself. 
Very  sincerely  yours, 

W.  I.  Thomas. 

As  in  an  omitted  paragraph  of  the  above,  the  Pro- 
fessor objected  that  I  had  considered  womanhood  too 
exclusively  with  reference  to  housekeeping,  I  then  sent 
him  the  more  cosmic  presentation  of  the  subject  I  had 
given  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly;  to  which  he  replied : 

University  of  Chicago, 

December  15,  1908. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Peirce  : 

I  have  been  looking  at  your  book  again,  and  with  the  one 
received  since  writing  to  you  it  confirms  what  I  was  thinking — 
that  you  had  anticipated  much  that  is  most  fundamental  in 
the  modern  discussion  of  woman.  You  may  have  the  satis- 
faction of  knowing  that  you  wrote  ahead  of  your  time,  and 
it  is  the  fate  of  all  who  do  that  to  be  ridiculed  or  neglected — 
or  both. 

I  am  planning  to  have  some  able  student  make  a  study  of 
the  woman  movement,  with  the  special  view  of  determinnig 
the  development  of  the  ideas  in  it — of  working  it  out  as  a 
part  of  the  history  of  thought.  It  is  evident  that  your  name 
will  be  very  prominent  in  this  work.  I  should  like  to  pres- 
ent the  two  volumes  you  have  given  me  to  the  University 
Library,  to  be  used  in  the  work  and  also  to  be  accessible  to 
students  of  the  question. 

Sincerely  yours, 

W.  I.  Thomas. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

"what's  wrong  with  the  world?" — Continued. 

Such  having  been  the  writer's  early  disappointments  in 
trying  to  make  women  see  things  as  they  are,  her  present 
thought  is  that  in  order  that  the  World-sister  may  become 
to  the  World-brother  in  all  innocence  and  freedom  the 
beautiful  and  satisfying  Other  Self  that  for  his  world- 
mission  he  requires,  he  must  himself  first  admit  to  him- 
self, and  then  frankly  and  fully  acknowledge  to  her,  the 
tremendous  industrial  dislocation  and  consequent  home- 
shattering  and  girl-ruination  that  his  steam  machinery 
and  organized  labor  within  a  century  and  a  half  have 
wrought  against  her  as  a  Home-dweller  and  a  Home- 
maker. 

Throughout  the  old  times  there  were  no  stores  because 
there  were  no  factories,  no  steam  machinery.  Everything 
eaten  and  everything  worn  was  made  in  the  home  by  the 
home  women  from  the  raw  materials  raised  by  the  farm- 
ers. Their  processes  were  their  own  invention,  and  to 
the  race  the  money  value  of  their  industry  and  skill  was 
beyond  computation.  When  the  Englishman  came  to 
the  continent  which  was  to  make  him  an  American,  he 
began  as  a  farmer,  and  this  busy  and  tireless  woman  was 
the  farmer's  wife. 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  19 

In  1619  in  Jamestown,  Va.,  on  the  very  first  day  of 
the  very  first  legislative  assembly  ever  held  by  white 
men  on  this  continent,  it  was  moved,  and  the  motion  was 
carried,  that  as  many  acres  of  land  should  be  apportioned 
to  the  wife  of  every  colonist  as  to  the  colonist  himself; 
''because,"  argued  the  mover  of  the  bill,  '"in  an  infant 
settlement  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  the  outdoor 
labors  of  the  men  or  the  indoor  labors  of  the  women 
are  more  indispensable  to  the  welfare  of  the  colony." 

During  the  simple  pioneer  and  colonial  eras,  every 
Farm  and  every  Household  in  the  land  was  each  an  In- 
dustrial Autonomy  complete  and  closed  within  itself,  with 
a  Unit  Farmer  at  the  head  of  the  one  and  a  Unit  House- 
wife at  the  head  of  the  other;  no  farmer  co-operating 
with  farmer  neighbors  the  better  to  run  his  farm;  no 
housewife  co-operating  with  neighbor  housewives  the  bet- 
ter to  run  her  home;  and  similarly  in  our  own  highly 
complex  civilization  is  every  farm  and  every  household 
in  the  land  each  an  Industrial  Autonomy  complete  and 
closed  within  itself,  with  a  Unit  Farmer  at  the  head  of 
the  one  and  a  Unit  Housewife  at  the  head  of  the  other; 
no  farmer  co-operating  with  farmer  neighbors  the  better 
to  run  his  farm;  no  housewife  co-operating  with  neighbor 
housewives  the  better  to  run  her  home. 

Up  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  therefore,  the 
American  women  of  every  community  and  every  family, 
whether  married  or  single,  busied  themselves  practically 
every  day  and  all  day  in  the  household  arts  which,  by 
feeding,  clothing,  and  ministering  to  all  the  bodily  wants 
of  fathers  and  husbands  and  sons,  enabled  the  men  to 
go  forth  daily  to  provide  from  the  fields  and  herds  and 


20 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


flocks  the  raw  materials  required  for  the  practice  of  those 
arts.  The  periodical  making  of  candles  and  soap,  of 
sausages  and  salt  pork  and  hams  and  corned  beef,  of  dried 
and  pickled  and  preserved  fruits  and  vegetables,  and  the 
brewing  of  the  universally-used  ale  and  beer;  the  daily 
carding,^  spinning,  weaving  and  knitting  of  textiles,  and 
the  making  and  mending  and  laundering  of  garments ;  the 
tri-daily  cooking  and  cleaning  and  tidying; — these  multi- 
form indoor  industries  kept  the  house-mothers  and  their 
daughters  busy  from  morning  until  far  into  the  night,  and 
from  year's  end  to  year's  end.  The  saying  that  "Woman's 
work  is  never  done"  was  literally,  absolutely  true. 

Thus  the  old-time,  pre-steam-machinery  World-sister 
supported  by  her  hand  labor  not  only  herself, — she  half 
supported  the  family  besides.  She  not  only — to  use  a 
fine  Rooseveltian  phrase — "pulled  her  own  weight  in  the 
boat  of  life,"  she  pulled  half  that  of  her  children  also, 
besides  bearing  in  agony  and  mothering  those  children. 
Think  how  dependent  upon  those  incessant  and  universal 
home-labors  of  its  "weaker"  half  were  the  wealth  and 
the  manhood  force  of  the  "stronger"  half  of  this  and 
every  other  country ! 

Yet  so  blind  was  the  World-brother  to  what  the  World- 
sister  by  his  side  was  achieving  for  him,  that  because  he 
provided  the  roof  over  her  head  and  the  razv  materials 
for  her  fingers,  he  believed, — and  she  thoughtlessly 
echoed  the  belief, — that  he  "supported"  her.  Man  "sup- 
porting" Woman !  One-half  the  adult  world  carrying 
on  its  back  the  other  half!  It  would  be  incredible  that 
this  actually  was  manhood's  serious  though  absurd  con- 
viction,  did  we   not  know  that   for   generations   it   was 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  21 

in  truth  the  prevailing  economic  theory  of  family  life. 

But  though  the  World-brother  and  his  Sister  univer- 
sally began  human  civilization  together  as  farmer  and 
farmer's  wife, — he  out  of  doors  laboring  with  his  hands, 
she  within  doors  laboring  with  hers, — this  manual  labor 
was  not  after  all  congenial  to  them. 

A  few  years  ago  the  brilliant  Ambrose  Bierce  in  a 
magazine  dialogue  insisted  upon  it  that  what  all  human 
beings  without  exception  hate  and  do  their  best  to  escape 
from,  is  manual  labor.  The  working-man,  he  thinks, 
envies  and  resents  the  office-man  because,  while  the 
working-man  and  his  class  are  manual  toilers,  the'office- 
men  are  brain-workers  only — and  the  laboring  man 
doesn't  consider  that  "work"  at  all ! 

Therefore,  in  countless  instances  the  mental  gifts  and 
energy  of  the  male  descendants  of  the  colonial  farmers 
emancipated  them  from  the  ancestral  bondage  to  hand 
labor,  so  that  now  each  week-day  morning  sees  two  or 
more  millions  of  them  betaking  themselves  to  business 
offices,  wherein  by  brain-labor  at  their  desks  they  provide 
employment  for  all  the  hand-workers  of  the  nation  save 
only  the  farmers  and  the  men  who  help  the  farmers,  and 
the  housewives  and  the  women  who  help  the  housewives. 
In  return  for  these  organizing  services,  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  the  nation  pays  to  them  those  small 
imperceptible  tolls  on  all  the  necessaries  and  accessories 
of  life,  whose  aggregates  roll  up  into  the  great  incomes 
that  make  them  "the  rich." 

The  outcry  against  these  rich  has  long  been  the  most 
popular  cry  of  our  day;  but  without  the  citizens  of 
mental  power  who  as  "business"  men  have  created  and 


22 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


direct  all  the  American  banking,  mining,  manufacturing, 
merchandizing  and  transportation  industries,  enterprises, 
corporations  and  trusts,  and  who  also  finance  the  educa- 
tional institutions, — where  would  be  the  American  civi- 
lization? where  the  hundred  and  fifty  billions  of  American 
accumulated  values  as  against  the  eighty  billions  of  Ger- 
man and  the  eighty-five  billions  of  British  similar 
values?*  Save  for  such  men  as  these  our  youthful  con- 
tinent would  have  remained  poor  and  backward  and  un- 
developed indeed ! 

It  is  said  that  the  Canadians  scorn  and  look  down 
upon  U9f  Americans  and  wish  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
us.  How  amusing!  What  would  northwest  Canada  be 
to-day,  let  us  ask,  without  the  American  house-heating 
inventions  that  make  endurable  its  terrible  winters,  or 
without  the  American  plowing  and  harvesting  machines 
that  have  brought  under  cultivation  its  vast  otherwise 
untilled  areas?  Nay;  what  would  the  whole  world  be 
without  the  "Standard  Oil"  that  lightens  its  darkness, 
or  even  without  the  oblong  tin  cans  in  which  that  product 
is  sold,  and  which  are  converted  into  so  many  helpful 
uses  by  the  poverty-stricken  Orientals  who  buy  it  ? 

In  the  view  of  this  humble  writer  the  American  Busi- 
ness Man  is,  as  the  phrase  is,  "all  right."  Not  him  should 
the  reformer,  the  philanthropist,  the  labor-leader,  the  fic- 
tionist  and  the  editor  decry  and  call  down, — but  this  busi- 
ness man's  unfe  and  daughter,  otherwise  the  two  millions 
or  more  educated  women  whom  his  inventive  genius  and 


•  These  are  the  figures  of  Sir  George  Paish,  the  eminent  statistician 
of  London,  A  more  recent  official  estimate  raises  the  American  valua- 
tion to  one  hundred  and  eighty  billions! 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  23 

matchless  executive  ability  have  lifted  along  with  himself 
up  and  out  of  the  incessant  hand-labors  of  their  farm 
forefathers  and  mothers,  and  have  made — not  the  Or- 
ganizers of  Industrial  Womanhood,  as  he  himself  has 
long  been  the  Organizer  of  Industrial  Manhood,  but, — O 
lame  and  impotent  conclusion ! — its  superfluous  Parasites, 
Non-Producers,  Consumers,  and  Spenders. 

Yet  our  master  financiers  so  little  suspect  what  they 
have  done  that  they  are  now  searching  the  civilized 
world  for  the  causes  of  the  high  cost  of  living,  when  the 
main  cause  is  beneath  their  own  roofs  and  at  their  own 
hearthstones. 

The  steam-machinery  and  specialized  labor  of  these 
money-kings  have  taken  away  from  contemporary  wom- 
anhood one-half  at  least  of  the  domestic  industries  which 
the  old-time  womanhood  invented  and  practised  for  thou- 
sands of  years — and  no  proportionately  noble  because 
indispensable  and  self-supporting  occupations  have  in- 
stead been  provided  for  her. 

The  resulting  status  quo  is  the  most  alarming  that 
American  civilization  has  ever  known. 

For  what  can  be  more  desperate  than  to  read  that  in 
the  United  States  to-day  are  seventeen  millions  of  men 
and  women  of  marriageable  age  who  are  not  married — 
multitudes  of  whom,  therefore,  are  not,  nor  can  be,  in 
the  enjoyment  of  a  home? 

A  still  more  thundering  and  portentous  statistic  is  that 
in  this  enormously  rich  country  thirty-nine  out  of  every 
hundred  marriageable  men  are  unmarried.  Correspond- 
ingly, thirty-nine  out  of  every  hundred  marriageable 
women  must  be  unmarried  too,  and  instead  of  presiding 


24  A'EIV    YORK.'^A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

over  homes  of  their  own,  those  who  are  not  still  under 
the  paternal  roof  are  living  in  rooming-houses  and  board- 
ing-houses and  hotels,  or  in  tiny  flats, — either  alone  or 
with  one  or  more  women  chums, — or  as  unblushing  mis- 
tresses with  so-called  "protectors,"  who  will  leave  them, 
or  whom  they  will  leave,  for  a  similar  sensual  companion- 
ship whenever  the  fancy  so  inclines  them.  Mrs.  John 
Van  Vorst,  in  her  "Woman  Who  Toils,"  declares  (pp. 
88,  81)  : 

The  American  woman  is  restless,  dissatisfied.  Whether 
among  the  highest  or  lowest  classes,  she  is  driven  toward  a 
destiny  that  is  not  normal.  The  factories  are  full  of  old  maids ; 
the  colleges  are  full  of  old  maids;  the  ball-rooms  in  the 
society  centres  are  full  of  old  maids.  For  natural  obliga- 
tions are  substituted  the  fictitious  duties  of  clubs,  meetings, 
committees,  organizations,  professions,  a  thousand  unwomanly 
occupations. 

Yet  it  is  claimed  that  the  average  American  housewife 
spends  but  $50.00  a  year  on  her  food  and  the  same  amount 
on  her  clothing.  Eighty-two  per  cent,  of  this  great  class 
keep  no  maid,  but,  as  the  phrase  is,  "do  all  their  own 
work," — that  is,  all  the  cooking,  cleaning,  tidying,  launder- 
ing, and  mending  of  their  families  and  also  much  sewing; 
nine  per  cent,  of  them  keep  but  one  maid,  and  therefore 
must  help  personally  with  these  domestic  functions,  and 
also  the  unmarried  daughters  of  these  two  classes  by 
tens  of  thousands  seek  and  obtain  employment  in  factories, 
shops,  offices,  and  schools.  ' 

Thus  over  nine-tenths  of  all  American  women  are  as 
self-supporting  as  were  their  pioneer   foremothers,  and 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  25 

less  than  one-tenth  of  them  it  is  that,  by  employing  others 
to  make  their  clothing,  and  also  by  keeping  two  or  more 
servants,  are  thereby  exempt  from  all  manual  labor  even 
to  needlework,  and  public  opinion  demanding  no  brain 
labor  from  them — in  this  our  great  Democracy  they 
practically  constitute  a  one-sex  aristocracy,  yes,  an  "aris- 
tocracy" as  genuine  and  more  inexcusable  than  any  the 
sun  of  worldly  prosperity  ever  shone  upon;  for  in  other 
aristocracies  both  sexes  equally  are  non-earViers,  but  in 
the  one  under  consideration  that  ''nobody  works  but 
father"  is  often  too  literally  true ! 

The  terrific  load — the  crushing  financial  weight  of  this 
feminine  aristocracy  on  the  shoulders  of  the  American 
people  can  be  estimated  from  the  cost  of  supplying  shelter 
tents  and  the  plainest  food  and  clothing  to  less  than  a 
million  Northern  soldiers  throughout  the  Civil  War.  This 
cost  was  five  hundred  million  dollars  a  year !  But  to  the 
ornamental  woman-army  of  which  I  speak  ''our  United 
States"  contribute  the  beautiful  homes,  the  expensive 
toilettes  and  jewels,  the  costly  journeys  and  festivities, 
the  choicest  viands  and  wines,  the  rarest  art,  and  the 
carriages  and  motors  of  the  land.  As  a  rule  they  have 
one  city  and  one  country  house — many  of  them  have 
several.  They  pass  their  time  in  sports  and  amusements 
and  gossip  and  bridge  and  travel ;  their  hearts  they 
lavish  chiefly  on  animals;  a  fraction  of  them  plays  at 
"church"  and  "charity"  and  "welfare"  work;  another 
fraction  includes  the  devoted  clubwomen  and  suffragettes 
or  anti-suffragettes. 

Meanwhile,  because  they  are  not  giving  to  the  working 
masses  of  their  sex  the  organizing  brain  labor  that  their 


26  NEiy    YORK:  a'' SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

fathers  and  husbands  devote  to  the  working  masses  of  the 
manhood  sex — working  girls  and  working  women  must 
in  battalions  leave  their  sleeping  places  every  work-day 
morning,  must  toil  in  men's  offices  and  be  half  paid  by 
men  employers,  because  the  latter  can't — they — can — 
NOT — pay  to  working  women  full  wages  and  '"support'* 
wives  and  daughters  and  sisters  too !  For  "homes"  these 
toilers  return  to  hall  bedrooms,  or  to  "flats"  so  contracted 
that  in  them  they  can  hardly  turn  round. 

But  thousands  of  them  note  and  envy  the  lives  of  irre- 
sponsible ease  and  pleasure  and  variety  that  the  "society" 
women  lead.  They,  too,  crave  idleness  and  joys  and  dress 
and  "good  times,"  and  on  every  side  these  are  offered 
them  in  return  for  the  chiefest  jewel  of  their  sex.  The 
jewel  is  parted  with.  Not  a  sun  sets  that  has  not  seen 
new  girls  hovering  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss.  Not  a 
sun  rises  that  has  not  seen  new  girls  plunged  into  that 
abyss, — the  men  who  led  and  who  maintain  them  there, 
seared  and  animalized  into  selfish  and  scornful  traitors 
to  the  American  Home,  instead  of  living  in  it  and  for 
it  as  did  the  clear-eyed  and  virile  husbands — "house- 
bands" — that  were  once  the  national  birthright  of  all 
marriageable  American  maidens. 

The  excuse  of  this  derelict  American  manhood? — 

Simply, — "the  high  cost  of  living." 

The  reason  of  the  high  cost  of  living? — 

Simply  that  the  educated  women  of  the  land  as  a  class 
are  not  doing  the  only  money-value  work — are  not  filling 
the  only  labor  sphere  that  by  any  possibility  in  the  modern 
world  could  replace  their  old-time  one  of  Family  Manu- 
facturing— the  sphere  of  Retail  or  Family  Distribution. 


CHAPTER  V. 
"what's  wrong  with  the  world?" — Continued. 

Just  what,  let  us  ask,  is  the  existing  economic  situation 
throughout  this  "Christendom"  which  is  theoretically  the 
Domain  of  Christ? 

The  existing  economic  situation  is  this: 

Through  thought  and  study  and  invention  and  energy 
the  abler  sons  of  the  old-time  farmer  collectively  evolved 
into  the  Modern  Business  Man,  who,  and  especially  the 
American  Business  Man,  is  the  Chief  Civilizer  of  the 
Globe  because  he  is  its  Chief  Organizer.  Unfortunately, 
though  this  superman  organizes  all  lesser  industries,  he 
overlooks  the  great  Farming  Industry  from  which  he 
sprang,  nor  does  he  urge  the  housewives  to  organize  their 
equally  great  and  indispensable  Housekeeping  One. 

This  failure  on  the  part  of  the  Modern  Farmer  and  the 
Modern  Housewife  to  grasp  the  Spirit  and  Method  of 
their  own  Age,  is  the  true  and  sufficient  cause  of  the  deep- 
ening poverty  and  distress  and  consequent  unrest  of  the 
European  and  American  masses. 

In  the  United  States  about  six  million  farmers  raise 
all  the  food  of  the  nation,  and  about  sixteen  million  house- 
wives cook  it.  As  has  already  been  said,  every  Farm  and 
every  Household  is  a  'separate  autonomy,  complete  and 
closed  within  itself, — no  Farmer  combining  with  farmer 


28  NEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

neighbors  the  better  and  more  economically  to  run  his 
farm; — no  housewife  combining  with  neighbor  house- 
wives the  better  and  more  economically  to  run  her  house. 
Think  of  it !  The  special  industries  of  the  United  States, 
from  lucifer  matches  to  locomotives,  all  on  the  highest 
possible  plane  of  business  economy  and  efficiency;  and 
our  two  universal,  because  food-supplying,  industries  on 
the  lowest  possible  level  of  personal  makeshift,  half- 
training,  and  waste !  Surely,  no  more  fatal  formula  for 
national  economic  dislocation  than  this  can  be  conceived. 

Instead  of  the  tireless  women-fingers  of  every  house- 
hold achieving,  as  in  former  times,  just  enough  food  and 
cloth  for  that  household, — the  mills  and  factories  of  the 
modern  World-brother  heap  up  foods  and  garments  in 
quantities  enormous  enough  for  families  by  the  ten  thou- 
sand and  the  hundred  thousand. 

But  these  products  have  to  be  distributed.  Therefore, 
the  World-brother  has  had  to  create  and  daily  has  to 
pay  for  an  entirely  new  field  of  labor,  one  practically 
unknown  up  to  a  hunded  and  fifty  years  ago, — the  labor- 
field  of  Distribution  or  Merchandisinq. 

The  immediate  agent  of  this  distribution  to  the  house- 
mother for  her  family  is  the  modern  retail  store,  and 
the  conduct  and  responsibility  and  money-making  of  the 
Retail  Store  it  is  which  the  intelligent  World-brother 
should  now  confide  to  his  intelligent  Sister  as  the  financial 
quid  pro  quo  of  the  Home  Manufacturing  of  which  he, 
and  he  alone,  has  deprived  her. 

As  at  present  carried  on  by  men,  Retail  Distribution  is 
disastrous  to  this  nation  in  two  directions.  First,  it  is  an 
occupation  far  too  light  for  manhood  thews  and  sinews 


NEIV   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  ^  29 

and  therefore  it  atrophies  manhood — makes  it  non-manly; 
and  second,  it  attracts  away  from  the  land  manhood  labor 
which  is  absolutely  needed  to  plant  and  harvest  the  nation's 
crops.  Living  prices  are  so  torturingly  high  partly 
because  not  enough  raw  materials  are  raised  to  go  com- 
fortably round,  and  partly  because  the  nation  is  paying 
an  army  of  men  who  ought  to  be  helping  to  raise  suf- 
ficient crops  for  its  needs  to  distribute  insufficient  ones! 

The  farmers  can  not  get  all  the  farm  hands  they 
require  in  order  to  grow  and  harvest  the  food  for  the 
live  stock. 

Ten  years  ago  there  were  two  and  a  half  animals  to 
every  consumer  in  the  nation.  Today  there  are  but  one 
and  three-quarters, — nearly  a  whole  animal  less  to  each 
consumer!  Is  it  any  wonder  that  meat  has  soared, — and 
because  the  scarcity  of  meat  makes  a  greater  demand  for 
eggs,  that  eggs,  too,  have  soared  ? 

Thus  the  Economic  Leech  of  the  civilized  world  is  prac- 
tically two-headed :  the  lavishly-spending,  non-producing 
Society  Woman  being  the  one  head,  the  Retail  Store  as 
carried  on  by  men,  the  other. 

Fifteen  dollars  out  of  every  hundred  dollars  spent  by 
the  housewife  is  what  the  seventy  years'  experience  of 
the  English  Rochdale  Pioneers  and  their  imitators  has 
demonstrated  to  be  the  household  toll  to  the  middleman. 

It  is  said  that  the  price  of  the  food  of  the  country  as 
paid  to  the  farmers  and  gardeners  of  the  country  is  six 
billions  of  dollars  a  year,  and  that  to  get  it  to  the  con- 
sumers costs  in  transportation  and  middle-men  seven 
billions  of  dollars  more — thirteen  billions  in  alL  Of  this 
inconceivable  sum  about  two  billions — two  thousand  mil- 


30  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

lions — would  be  returned  to  the  families  of  the  nation  if 
the  housewives  of  the  nation  were  banded  among  them- 
selves on  the  Rochdale  Plan  for  the  purchase  and  dis- 
tribution of  their  table  supplies ! 

It  is  also  said  that  the  advertising  of  the  country  costs 
four  tons  of  gold  a  day,  of  which  at  least  one  half  must 
be  paid  out  by  men  in  securing  their  women  customers. 

Probably  much  also  of  this  fearful  expense  would  be 
saved  if  women  bought  and  sold  co-operatively  among 
themselves. 

The  scornful  resentment  against  society  women  as 
voiced  by  leading  fictionists  and  dramatists  and  press- 
writers  of  the  day  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic — the 
shameless  condoning  and  idealising  and  illustrating  in  their 
stories  and  plays  and  newspapers  of  adulterous  wives  and 
girl  mistresses  and  girl  models  and  girl  bohemians — their 
ousting  of  the  word  "lady"  from  the  Anglo-American 
speech,  so  that  the  species  "gentleman"  need  no  longer 
feel  obliged  to  observe  the  chivalries,  the  courtesies,  the 
leticencies,  the  delicacies,  hardly  even  the  decencies,  with 
which  the  madonna  sex  in  our  country  was  once  enhaloed 
— a  leading  genius  of  the  day  defining  a  women  as  "a  rag 
and  a  hone  and  a  hank  of  hair,"  and  declaring  that  "the 
colonel's  lady  and  Judy  0' Grady  are  the  same  under  their 
skins"  and  that  "a  woman  is  only  a  woman,  but  a  good 
cigar  is  a  smoke!" — all  this  vitriol  of  contempt,  hatred, 
and  repulsion  has  its  inspiration  in  the  tremendous  Revo- 
lution and  Tragedy  we  are  considering,  namely :  that  our 
high-class  educated  womanhood,  instead  of  being  thrifty 
and  helpful  womanhood,  is  "consuming"  and  "spending" 
and  "non-producing"  womanhood,  and  that  our  able  and 


NEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  31 

enterprising  manhood  is  obliged  nolens  volens  to  work  for 
and  "support"  it ! 

As  the  champions  of  these  much-bestowing  and  too- 
Httle-receiving  fathers  and  husbands,  the  popular  writers 
snarl  and  sneer  at  the  "society"  wives  and  daughters  as 
though  their  money  dependence  were  their  deliberate 
and  wilful  choice.  It  is  not.  Society  women  simply 
accept  the  conditions  created  for  them  by  the  men  of 
their  families,  and  take  for  gospel  truth  what  they  have 
heard  all  their  lives,  namely,  that  women  always  have  been 
and  always  will  be  "supported."  Thus  they  very  excusably 
feel  no  responsibility  about  it. 

Whose  then  is  the  responsibility  for  this  "army  of  the 
unemployed" — this  two  million  army  of  American  maidens, 
wives,  and  widows  of  the  capitalist  and  the  professional 
classes,  who  give  no  economic  quid  pro  quo  for  what 
they  enjoy? 

The  responsibility  for  this  abnormal  feminine  host 
rests  with  the  trained  and  strenuous  Brain  workers — the 
Inventors,  Engineers,  Promoters,  Lawyers  and  Financiers 
who  collectively  constitute  the  AMERICAN  BUSINESS 
MAN — on  the  one  hand  the  greatest  constructive  force 
of  this  or  any  other  era,  and  on  the  other  the  blind  incon- 
sequential father  and  husband  of  the  parasite  woman. 
•His  is  the  blame — his  and  the  woman-despising  COL- 
LEGE PROFESSOR  who  influences  him — because  both 
these  types  claim  to  be  on  the  heights  of  financial  knowl- 
edge and  wisdom.  Their  vision  sweeps  the  industrial 
horizon  of  the  world,  past  and  present.  If  they  don't 
know  what  women  have  done  and  have  been  in  the  past 


32  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  therefore  what  presumably  they  are  capable  of  in 
the  future,  they  ought  to  know! 

They  have  no  right,  these  powerful  and  masterful 
brothers,  either  to  dwarf  the  women  of  their  own  class 
into  individual  children  or  to  'tote"  them  as  practical 
dolls.  It  is  their  first  and  deepest  duty  to  recognize  in 
them  their  own  God-given  intellectual  comrades  and  work- 
ing partners,  and  since  as  Collective  Manhood  they  them- 
selves have  grown  so  great,  while  modern  woman  is  still 
but  the  original  "unit"  pigmy,  they  should  further  ask  what 
is  to  be  done  that  as  Collective  Womanhood  this  World- 
sister  may  reach  a  sufficient  executive  and  economic 
stature  with  themselves  to  be  able  to  keep  free  and  strong 
and  joyous  upward  step  with  her  ever-ascending  World- 
brother  and  become  to  day  as  proportionally  indispensable 
and  therefore  priceless,  to  him  and  to  the  race  as  of  old 
she  was,  and  as  he  still  is  to  her.. 

It  is  by  far  the  greatest  economic  question  now  before 
the  country;  the  greatest  question  in  the  Department  of 
State;  the  greatest  question  in  the  Department  of  the 
Treasury;  the  greatest  question  for  the  President  of  the 
United  States.  Conferences  ought  to  be  held  upon  it 
by  the  Chambers  of  Commerce  conjoined  with  the  Agri- 
cultural Granges  and  the  State  and  National  Boards  of 
Education  throughout  the  country,  and  some  one  on 
behalf  of  the  above  high  functionaries,  and  in  the  name 
of  the  World-brother,  should  draw  up  an  address  to  the 
World-sister  in  manhood  language,  but  to  the  following 
effect : 


CHAPTER   VI. 

"what's  wrong  with  the  world?" — Continued 

The  World-brother  to  the  World-sister. 

"Sister-mine,  when  you  and  I  started  human  civili- 
zation thousands  of  years  ago — I  as  the  farmer,  you 
as  the  farmer's  wife — you  were  my  efficient  and  all- 
sufficient  assistant  in  our  joint-work  of  providing  for 
the  human  family  of  which  we  were  the  parents. 
Both  labored  with  aur  hands  for  this  family — I  out- 
side the  house,  you  inside  the  house.  Little  by  little 
and  more  and  more  I  devoted  myself  to  the  brain- 
labor  I  loved,  and  gave  up  the  manual  labor  I  hated — 
enslaving  weaker  men  or  hiring  more  ignorant  ones 
to  do  it  for  me.  I  pondered,  I  investigated,  I  experi- 
mented, I  invented.  At  last — after  many  ages  and 
with  age-long  gaps  between  my  efforts — I  perfected 
machines  which  could  do  a  great  deal  of  my  work  and 
of  yours  also ;  machines  which,  while  you  were  spin- 
ning and  weaving  and  sewing  one  coat  or  one  shirt, 
could  turn  out  coats  and  shirts  by  the  thousand.  Thus 
we  have  come  to  the  era  wherein  it  no  longer  pays 
educated  women  to  labor  with  their  hands  any  more 
than  it  would  pay  educated  men  to  do  so. 

"Not  for  this,  however,  should  you  accept  futility 


34  NEW   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  'a  good  time'  for  your  life-work,  as  for  a  genera- 
tion or  two  you  have  been  doing.     Considered  as, a 
vacation  after  your  thousands  of  years  of  hand-labor, 
you  richly  deserved  it.     It  was  right  and  beautiful 
for  you  to  have  it;  it  was  justice  for  you  to  have  it; 
for  not  you,  but  I,  had  had  all  the  education  through- 
out the  ages;  not  you,  but  I,  had  had  most  of  the 
enjoyment  and  the  glory  while  throughout  the  long 
centuries  and  milleniums  you  had  been  kept  steadily 
at  manual  work  and  in  ignorance  in  order  that  I 
might  have  my  cooked  food  when  and  as  I  wanted  it, 
and  that  new  garments  might  be  ready  for  me  when 
those  I  was  using  were  worn  out !     Not  a  little  bit. 
Sister-mine,  have   I   minded  the   sneers   of   German 
professors    or    German-American    students    at    the 
'extravagance'    and    'pleasure    loving*    of    American 
wives.     Those  m^^n,  by  the  way,  never  comment  nor 
sneer  at  the  wealth  and  luxury  lavished  by  the  Euro- 
pean man  upon  the  European  mistress  and  the  Euro- 
pean courtesan !     It  is  only  the  American  mothers 
and  daughters  to  whom  they  begrudge  the  external 
beauty   and   delight   that  virtuous   women   love   and 
crave  as  much  as  do  the  non-virtuous. 

"But  now  that  you  are  educated,  Sister-mine: 
now  that  you  are  travelled  and  experienced ;  now  that 
you  have  had  a  long,  long  rest  from  the  relentless 
cares  and  labors  of  our  devoted  foremothers,  you 
should  henceforth  do  as  I  am  doing — expend  your 
best  self  in  brain  labor.  Your  feminine  mission  as 
home-maker  is  now  not  to  manufacture  for  the  home, 


NEPV   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  35 

but  to  buy  for  it.  Your  wifely  and  motherly  business 
to-day  is  not  Producing ;  it  is  Spending. 

"But  spending,  Sister-mine,  to  be  wise  and  not  to 
waste,  must  be  carried  out  on  business  principles  as 
thoroughly  and  rigidly  as  earning  is.  In  other  words, 
women  home-makers  to-day  ought  to  buy  in  the 
wholesale  instead  of  the  retail  market,  and  from  the 
producer  direct  instead  of  from  the  middleman.  This, 
however,  women  can  not  do  unless  they  buy  col- 
lectively and  divide  among  one  another  after  the 
manner  of  the  famous  Rochdale  Equitable  Pioneers 
who  bought  at  wholesale  and  sold  at  retail  both  to 
members  and  to  outsiders,  and  divided  the  profits 
among  the  members  in  proportion  to  their  purchases. 

"As  Home-makers,  you  women  have  a  tremendous 
sphere  of  your  very  own — a  sphere  as  big  as  the 
human  family.  It  is  an  inexhaustible  gold-mine  under 
your  feet.  But  instead  of  organizing  and  running  it 
yourselves  and  making  for  womanhood  all  the  money 
there  is  in  it,  thereby  also  making  your  sex  inde- 
pendently rich, — you  are  letting  the  middlemen  run 
it  and  put  the  profit  that  should  be  woman's  own  into 
their  masculine  pockets.  This  is  doubly  bad;  for 
while  you  give  up  to  them  this  woman's  work  which 
they  love — this  retail  selling — because  it  is  so  easy 
and  also  so  sociable,  they  are  leaving  undone  their 
own  manhood  crop-raising  and  stock-raising,  and 
therefore  food  enough  to  go  comfortably  round  is 
not  produced. 

"Now,  Sister-mine,  as  your  World-brother, —  other- 
wise the  Man  of  this  American  continent  and  respon- 


36  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

sible  for  its  best  welfare, — I  seriously  propose,  and  in 
this  I  earnestly  ask  for  your  sympathetic  co-operation, 
that  in  the  future  all  my  educated  daughters  who  on 
leaving  school  or  college  do  not  prefer  to  become 
vocationalists  (by  which  I  mean  teachers,  writers, 
artists,  actresses,  singers,  musicians,  nurses,  and  so 
on),  shall  fit  themselves  for  family  responsibilities  by 
beginning  Stock  Company  or  Co-operative  House- 
keeping. In  other  words,  I  propose  that  they  begin 
housekeeping  and  home-making  on  business  principles, 
starting  as  did  the  Rochdale  Pioneers,  with  dividing 
(that  is,  retailing)  groceries,  because  that  is  the 
simplest,  and  taking  Rochdale  methods  and  experience 
as  the  safe  and  sure  and  easy  guide  for  the  new 
departure. 

"As  a  practical  business  man,  Sister-mine,  I  want 
to  assure  you  that,  except  this,  there  is  no  possible 
remedy  for  the  high  cost  of  living  as  it  is  now  grip- 
ping and  grinding  this  nation  and  murdering  its  family 
life,  and  that  if  its  Educated  and  Leisured  Daughters 
do  not  take  the  lead  and  pilot  their  sex  into  this 
stock-company  or  "business"  housekeeping,  American 
manhood  and  womanhood  and  childhood  will  all  go 
to  the  devil  together,  and  the  Almighty  Himself  can 
not  stop  it. 

"For  the  Almighty  is  a  God  of  Cause  and  Effect, 
and  human  annals  afford  not  a  single  instance  where 
nations  have  not  reaped  as  they  have  sown. 

"The  present  economic  basis  of  American  Society  is 
all  wrong,  in  that  it  expects  and  compels  nine-tenths 
of  all  the  men  and  nine-tenths  of  all  the  women  to  be 


iVElV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  37 

hand-workers,  and  one-tenth  of  all  the  men  to  be 
brain  workers,  and  at  the  same  time  not  only  permits 
but  encourages  one-tenth  of  all  the  women  to  be  no 
workers  at  all,  but  to  be  "supported"  by  their  fellow- 
beings  as  the  irresponsible  spenders  of  intolerable 
billions ! 

"No  wonder  that  the  old-time  American  virtue 
and  probity  and  chivalry  and  decency  are  crumbling 
with  the  homes  of  the  American  people,  and  that 
thirty-nine  per  cent. — nearly  two-fifths— oi  Ameri- 
can marriageable  men  are  remaining  unmarried! 
When  "Poverty  comes  in  at  the  door"  not  only  does 
"Love  fly  out  of  the  window"; — Vice  spreads  her 
nets  in  the  cellar  and  Lust  orgies  under  the  roof!" 


CHAPTER  VII. 

"what's  wrong  with  the  world?" — Concluded. 

'  If  then  the  Educated  American  Mother, — the  two  mil- 
lions of  her — does  not  wish  to  stand  self-confessed  as  the 
hopeless  inferior  of  the  Educated  American  Father,  she 
must  accept  the  practical  facts,  the  great  machinery  facts, 
of  modern  life,  and,  by  organising  her  housekeeping, 
take  her  proper  place  as  the  "American  Business 
Woman"  side  by  side  with  the  American  Business  Man. 
While  he  ceaselessly  heaps  up  and  transports  harvests  and 
factory  products  for  the  families  of  the  land,  she  no  less 
ceaselessly  through  her  housekeeping  activities  must  dis- 
tribute these  harvests  and  products  to  the  families  of  the 
land. 

Everywhere  as  soon  as  possible  American  housewives 
should  unite  in  neighborhood  groups  of  two  hundred  or 
more  to  establish  and  maintain  for  the  benefit  of  them- 
selves and  their  families,  Distributing  Centres  or  "Stores" 
on  the  Rochdale  principle  of  "strictly  cash"  both  in  buy- 
ing and  selling;  selling  to  all  comers  at  current  retail 
rates  and  dividing  the  profits  among  the  members  in  pro- 
portion to  their  purchases ;  beginning  with  groceries  and 
vegetables  (because  this  is  what  the  Rochdale  Pioneers 
did,  and  it  is  also  the  easiest),  and  managing  each  Centre 
or  Store  by  an  unpaid  Executive  Committee  chosen  from 


I 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  39 

the  members  hy  the  members  until  it  is  successfully  and 
solidly  established;  after  which,  regular  salaries  should  be 
voted  to  its  officers  and  directors;  no  men  whatever  to 
be  on  the  Managing  Board;  the  planning  and  the  execu- 
tion to  be  entirely  by  women. 

And  because  the  great  Farming  Industry,  like  the  great 
Housekeeping  Industry,  is  entirely  behind  the  business 
organization  of  the  age, — simultaneously  with  Co-operative 
Housekeeping  should  be  brought  into  being  Co-operative 
Farming.  The  farms  of  every  United  States  township 
should  be  combined  and  managed  as  one  farm  on  the 
stock  company  basis  by  their  incorporated  owners;  each 
farmer  to  own  as  much  stock  in  the  company  as  his  land 
is  worth  and  to  continue  to  live  on  his  own  acres,  if  he 
so  desires ;  each  farmer  to  be  paid  the  current  rates  for 
his  labor,  whether  hand  labor  or  brain  labor;  the  whole 
area  to  be  planned  and  cultivated  in  accordance  with 
Scientific  Agriculture  and  Landscape  Architecture,  and  to 
be  managed  by  an  Executive  Board  elected  by  and  from 
the  farmer  owners. 

With  the  National  Farming  and  the  National  House- 
keeping thus  conformed  to  the  modern  ''business"  or  stock- 
company  principle,  all  other  trusts  would  fall  into  their 
relative  places,  with  none  encroaching  upon  or  robbing 
the  others,  because  the  Two  Universal  Industries  would 
be  on  the  alert  against  any  and  all  corporate  aggression 
injurious  to  their  mutual  interests.  Throughout  the  vast 
realms  of  Production  and  Distribution  the  deep,  the  divine, 
because  fraternal  principle  of  Co-operation,  would  be  en- 
throned; and  every  man,  woman,  and  child  would  fully 


40  NEW    YORK:   A    .SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  generously  receive — not  the  present  too  scanty  "all 
that's  coming  to  him,"  but  the  satisfying  "all  that  ought 
to  come  to  him." 

This  needed  readjustment  of  the  modern  sexes  as  earn- 
ers once  successfully  entered  upon,  the  discouraged  old 
world  would  renew  its  youth  and  "rejoice  greatly  and  be 
glad"  in  the  co-working  Brotherhood  of  Man  and  Sister- 
hood of  Woman  then  for  the  first  time  reahzed  according 
to  the  fore-ordained  plan  of  their  Divine  Triune  Creators. 

The  True  Votes  for  Women. 

Nor  would  these  co-operating  money-earners  and 
money-savers  be  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  business  world 
alone.  Their  just  and  sane  and  mutually  beneficient  busi- 
ness relations  would  automatically  bring  about  equally  just 
and  sane  and  beneficient  political  ones.  Through  new  and 
noble  legislation  the  World-brother  would  say  to  his 
World-sister : 

"Sister-mine,  we  men  no  longer  need  two  exclusively 
male  legislative  houses  to  pass  laws  and  ordinances 
for  you  and  for  me  and  for  our  children.  We  have 
been  electing  such  through  all  these  generations  simply 
until  you  should  reach  your  normal  intellectual 
stature,  and  also  by  the  up-to-date  business  manage- 
ment of  your  housekeeping  should  become  so  familiar- 
ized and  identified  with  financial  interests  and  con- 
siderations on  the  'big  business'  scale  that  you  could 
meet  us  on  common  ground. 

''We  therefore  offer  you  one  of  two  propositions: 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  41 

Either  we  will  everywhere  give  up  our  State  Senate 
Chambers  and  also  the  Washington  Senate  and  turn 
them  over  to  you — the  seats  and  committee  rooms  to 
be  occupied  by  women  elected  at  large  by  women 
from  the  women  of  each  State  respectively ;  and  also 
to  each  village,  town,  and  city  hall  we  will  add  a 
woman's  council-chamber,  the  same  to  be  filled  with 
women  elected  by  the  votes  at  large  of  the  women  of 
the  villages,  towns,  and  cities  : 

"Or,  should  you  prefer  it,  we  will  halve  the  nuuiber 
of  our  men  representatives  in  town  and  city  councils, 
and  also  in  State  legislatures  and  in  Congress,  by 
requiring  twice  as  many  votes  to  be  cast  for  a  member 
as  now  suffice  to  elect  him.  This  would  leave  one- 
half  the  seats  in  every  council-room  and  legislative 
chamber  vacant  for  the  women  who  would  be  elected 
by  the  women  voting  at  large  to  replace  them — the 
men  members  to  be  seated  together  on  one  side  of 
the  room  facing  the  Speaker,  and  the  women  together 
on  the  other  side. 

"In  either  of  the  above  methods  the  country  would 
secure  what  it  intimately  and  deeply  needs,  and  this 
is,  the  pure,  unalloyed,  equal  representation  of  both 
the  adult  sexes,  and  their  untrammelled  legislative 
discussions  and  decisions.  If  the  sexes  meet  in  the 
same  chamber,  however — in  order  to  be  absolutely 
just,  when  a  bill  is  on  its  final  passage  the  Right  and 
the  Left  Divisions  of  the  Chamber  should  invariably 
vote  separately,  so  that  no  measure  could  become  Law 
save  by  the  majority  vote  of  both  sexes." 


V 

42  XEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Should  American  Manhood  offer  and  American  Wom- 
anhood accept  this  Political  Representation  of  Women  by 
Women,  the  latter  would  thenceforward  possess  in  the 
State  just  what  the  Saviour  of  mankind  gave  to  women 
in  the  Family,  when  He  forbade  husbands  to  divorce  their 
wives  except  for  unfaithfulness:  they  would  possess  a 
National  Place  and  Vantage-ground  of  their  Very  Own 
from  which  could  be  brought  continually  to  bear  the 
concentrated  perception  and  force  of  the  feminine  mind. 

What  every  community  and  State  in  the  Union  needs 
and  must  have,  what  the  Union  itself  needs  and  must 
have,  what  the  whole  world  needs  and  must  have — is  the 
Quintessential  Thought  and  Point  of  View  of  Women  as 
women.  To  devolve  the  manhood  ballot  upon  women, 
and  thus  mix  them  up  promiscuously  with  men,  can  not 
possibly  secure  to  the  country  the  idiosyncratic  conclusions 
and  aspirations  of  adult  and  responsible  womanhood,  any 
more  than  to  turn  a  large  and  fertile  and  well-watered 
estate  into  a  uniform  swamp  would  bring  out  the  char- 
acteristic qualities  of  land  and  water  as  differentiated 
by  the  Creator  throughout  the  globe  to  their  mutual 
advantage  and  beauty. 

Three  tremendous  problems  are  besieging  and  beleaguer- 
ing educated  worrwnhood.  They  are:  the  High  Cost  of 
Living,  the  Servant  Question,  and  the  Social  Evil.  While 
they  concern  all  humanity  and  inter-penetrate  all  the 
ramifications  of  the  social  structure — they  belong  espe- 
cially to  educated  womanhood  because  they  must  be  solved 
by  womanly  right  thinking,  and  only  educated  women 
possess  the  knowledge  which  is  the  indispensable  pre- 
requisite of  such  thinking: 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  43 

"—Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  Good, 
Knowledge  the  wing  wherewith  we  fly  to  Heaven — " 

That  is,  to  happiness — "heaven"  in  Shakespeare's  day, 
who  said  this,  being,  as  now,  a  favorite  word  for  "hap- 
piness" and  also  the  Bible  term  for  the  same  thing. 

To  understand  the  womanhood  problems — to  master 
them — Educated  Woman  must  cease  equally  from  being 
the  Leech  and  Vampire  of  Financial  Man  and  the  non- 
thinking Echo  of  Intellectual  Man  that  now  she  is,  and 
in  business  offices  of  her  own,  and  in  committee  rooms  of 
her  own,  and  by  the  exercise  of  her  own  ability,  ideality, 
experience,  and  common  sense,  must  she  investigate  con- 
ditions and  causes  and  gather  facts  and  figures  in  the 
impartial,  uncompromising,  and,  above  all,  thorough  spirit 
of  her  Scientific  World-brother.  Her  conclusions  reached 
and  her  plans  formulated,  she  must  appeal  to  Collective 
Womanhood,  that  is,  to  women  agitating  and  acting 
together — to  achieve  them. 

Let  her  who  hath  eyes  to  see,  read  these  pages;  and  let 
let  her  who  hath  ears  to  hear,  heed  them! 

For  any  solution  of  the  problems  specified  other  than 
Organized  or  Business  Housekeeping  by  intelligent  and 
able  matrons  and  maidens,  together  with  Enlightened 
Legislation  through  similar  maidens  and  matrons  as 
elected  by  their  fellow-women  to  the  legislatures  and  town- 
councils  of  the  nation,  neither  will  nor  can  realize  any- 
thing but  fatuity — futility — failure! 

Educated  Sisters  of  America,  shall  we  not  awake? 
Shall  we  not  unite  ? 


44  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"We  have  everything  to  gain.  We  have  nothing  to 
lose  but  our  chains !" 

The  wind  that  waves  the  blossoms 

Sang,  sang,  sang  from  age  to  age. 

The  flowers  were  made  curious  by  this  joy. 

*'Oh  wind"  they  said,  "why  sing  you  at  your  labor 

While  we,  pink  beneficiaries,  sing  not 

But  idle,  idle,  idle  from  age  to  age?" 

— Stephen  Crane. 

If  it  be  true  that  Love  is  necessary  to  Joy — if  it  be  true 
that  Beauty  is  necessary  to  Joy — equally  is  it  true  that 
Achievement  is  necessary  to  Joy. 

But  achievement  can  come  only  through  work,  and  the 
highest  achievement,  whether  of  race  or  of  sex,  only 
through  collective  work. 

Co-working,  then,  or  "co-operation,"  Modern  Woman 
would  find  her  open  sesame  to  womanhood  happiness  and 
success,  just  as  long  and  long  ago  Modern  Man  found  it 
the  only  open  sesame  to  manhood  happiness  and  success. 

Should  not  therefore  the  World-brother  now  hasten 
to  persuade  his  problematical  World-sister  to  try  the 
magic  spell?  Would  she  not  quickly  learn  it  from  him, 
and,  so  learning,  forever  thereafter  cease  from  being 
merely  his  "white  man's  burden," — merely  his  "pink  bene- 
ficiary who  sings  not,  but  idles,  idles,  idles  from  age  to 
age?" 

In  this  connection  the  indulgent  Reader  may  be  willing 
to  close  this  section  of  our  "Symphonic  Study"  by  con- 
sidering in  Appendix  A  Kipling's  famous  White  Man's 
Burden  from  a  point  of  view  other  than  that  presented 
to  American  attention  by  its  distinguished  author. 


WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  NEW  YORK? 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

QUESTION  three:     "wHAT's  wrong  with   new  YORK?" 

What's  zvrong  with  New  York — and  therefore  with 
the  country  upon  which  as  its  financial,  and  fashion,  and 
art,  and  pleasure  centre,  New  York  exerts  so  tremendous 
and  formative  an  influence — is,  in  one  word,  Foreignism ; 
foreignism  in  religion,  foreignism  in  society,  foreignism 
in  education,  foreignism  in  the  press ;  and  since  religion, 
society,  education,  and  the  press  underlie  American  exist- 
ence— foreignism  in  morals  and  foreignism  in  government ; 
for  as  has  often  been  well  and  truly  said,  "Every  nation 
has  the  government  it  deserves,"  and  this  nation  is  now 
governed  by  foreigners — is  now  terrorized  by  foreigners. 

Twenty-five  or  more  years  ago  the  distinguished  lawyer 
and  after-dinner  speaker,  Joseph  H.  Choate  of  New  York, 
<it  a  St.  Patrick's  day  banquet  where  nearly  all  present 
were  Irish-Americans — declared  breezily  that  everybody 
except  New  Yorkers  ran  New  York,  and  that  all  positions 
of  pozvcr  in  the  city  were  filled  by  foreigners.  This  per- 
fectly true  statement  so  angered  the  Irish-American 
Mayor  Gilroy  that  he  sprang  to  his  feet,  scathingly  re- 
bukeed  this  leading  Hereditary  American,  then  flung  out 
of  the  room  and  attacked  him  further  in  the  papers  the 
next  day. 

Did  Mr.  Choate  retort,— '7/  is  true,"  and  then  proceed 


46  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

to  rally  all  the  Americans  in  New  York  into  a  solidarity 
whose  object  should  be  to  secure  for  themselves  their 
due  proportion  of  the  offices?  Not  at  all.  Mr.  Choate 
subsided. 

And  so  it  goes.  Free  speech  is  dead  in  this  country — 
killed  by  foreignism.  We  are  perpetually  sickened  and 
heart-broken  by  the  tireless  proclaiming  of  the  moral  de- 
cadence of  the  nation  and  the  flagrancy  of  its  money 
worship.  Over  the  causes  of  this  decadence  we  maintain 
a  practically  national  silence.  But  if  we  do  not  admit 
and  analyze  it,  how  can  we  arrest  it? 

Early  in  this  century  a  newspaper  quoted  the  famous 
Dr.  Parkhurst,  once  for  a  few  years  the  most  influential 
citizen  in  New  York,  as  saying: 

We  of  this  State  call  ourselves  a  representative  democracy, 
which  is  true  with  two  important  qualifications:  the  first  of 
which  is  that  we  are  not  a  democracy,  and  the  second,  we 
are  not  representative.  Pretty  soon  the  representatives  of  the 
sovereign  people  are  going  to  gather  in  Albany  for  the  purpose 
of  interpreting  eternal  law  in  its  application  to  this  Common- 
wealth. As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  will  be  no  eternal  law, 
no  representation,  no  sovereign  people,  no  commonwealth  in 
the  session  from  beginning  to  end.  Two  or  three  men  get 
together  in  this  city  about  once  a  week  and  settle  the  whole 
thing  in  advance;  and  we  must  do  them  the  justice  to  say 
that  they  are  but  exercising  authority  that  the  people  have 
abandoned.  And  the  most  serious  part  of  the  situation  is 
that  there  appears  to  be  only  here  and  there  a  scattered 
sporadic  mind  taking  it  all  to  heart.  Nobody  is  worrying 
about  it  or  fretting  under  it. 

The  profound  statesman,  Edmund  Burke,  once  wrote: 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  4; 

I  give  it  as  my  clear  opinion  that  if  things  are  left  to  them- 
selves a  nation  may  slide  down  fair  and  softly  from  the 
highest  point  of  grandeur  and  prosperity  to  the  lowest  state 
of  imbecility  and  meanness  without  any  one's  marking  a  par- 
ticular period  in  this  declension,  without  speculating  on  any 
of  the  innumerable  acts  through  which  have  stoien  ni  ims 
silent  and  insensible  revolution.  Every  event  so  prepares  the 
subsequent,  that,  when  it  arrives,  it  produces  no  surprise,  nor 
any  extraordinary  alarm. 

The  distinguished  and  indomitable  suffragist,  Rev. 
Anna  Howard  Shaw,  declared  a  few  years  since: 

New  York  is  Hell! 

And  even  in  its  infancy  Thomas  Jefferson  said  of  it: 

New  York,  like  London,  is  a  Sewer  of  all  the  Depravities"; — 

He  might  have  added,  "and  for  the  same  reason," — 
London  being  to  England,  as  New  York  to  North 
America,  the  sluice-gate  for  the  deep  inflowing  corrup- 
tion of  the  three  pagan-saturated  continents,  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa. 

H  any  one  knew  well  the  city  of  New  York,  surely  it 
was  that  gifted  O.  Henry,  humorist  and  tragedian  in  one, 
who  studied  it  during  the  first  decade  of  this  century, 
and  some  of  whose  chapters  from  its  multiple  life  are 
masterpieces  that  the  world  will  not  let  die.  Among  the 
briefest,  yet  perhaps  the  strongest  of  them  all,  is  The 
Duel,  which  opens  and  proceeds  in  this  wise : 

The  city  of  New  York  is  inhabited  by  four  million  mysteri- 


48  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

ous  strangers.  .  .  .  They  came  here  in  various  ways  and 
for  various  reasons — Hendrik  Hudson,  the  art-schools,  the 
stork,  the  annual  dressmakers'  convention,  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad,  love  of  money,  the  stage,  cheap  excursion  rates, 
brains,  personal  column  ads.,  heavy  walking  shoes,  ambition, 
freight  trains, — all  these  have  had  a  hand  in  making  up  the 
population. 

But  every  man  jack  when  he  first  sets  foot  on  the  stones  of 
Manhattan  has  got  to  fight.  He  has  got  to  fight  at  once  until 
either  he  or  his  adversary  wins.  There  is  no  resting  between 
rounds,  for  there  are  no  rounds.  It  is  slugging  from  the 
first.    It  is  a  fight  to  a  finish. 

Your  opponent  is  the  City.  You  must  do  battle  with  it 
from  the  time  the  ferry  boat  lands  you  on  the  Island  until 
either  it  is  yours  or  it  has  conquered  you.  It  is  the  same 
whether  you  have  a  million  in  your  pocket  or  only  the  price 
of  a  week's  lodging. 

The  battle  is  to  decide  whether  you  shall  become  a  New 
Yorker  or  remain  the  rankest  outlander  and  Philistine.  You 
must  be  one  or  the  other.  You  can  not  remain  neutral. 
You  must  be  for  or  against — lover  or  enemy — bosom  friend 
or  outcast.  And,  oh,  the  City  is  a  general  in  the  ring.  Not 
only  by  blows  does  it  seek  to  subdue  you.  It  wooes  you  to 
its  heart  with  the  subtlety  of  a  siren.  It  is  a  combination  of 
Delilah,  green  Chartreuse,  Beethoven,  chloral  and  John  L, 
in  his  best  days. 

In  other  cities  you  may  wander  and  abide  as  a  stranger  man 
as  long  as  you  please.  You  may  live  in  Chicago  and  be  a 
citizen  until  your  hair  whitens,  and  if  Boston  mothered  you, 
you  may  still  prate  of  beans  without  a  rebuke.  In  any  other 
town  but  Knickerbocker's  you  may  become  a  civic  pillar  and 
all  the  time  publicly  sneer  at  its  buildings  as  compared  with 
the  architecture  of  Col.  Blank's  residence  in  Jackson,  Miss., 
whence  you  hail,  and  you  will  not  be  set  upon.  But  in  New 
York  you  must  be  either  a  New  Yorker  or  the  invader  of 
a  modern  Troy  concealed  in  the  wooden  horse  of  your  con- 
ceited provincialism.     .     .     . 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  49 

This  town  is  a  leech.  It  drains  the  blood  of  the  country. 
Whoever  comes  to  it  accepts  a  challenge  to  a  duel.  It  is  a 
Juggernaut,  a  Moloch,  a  monster  to  which  the  innocence,  the 
genius,  and  the  beauty  of  the  land  must  pay  tribute.  Hand 
to  hand  every  newcomer  must  struggle  with  the  leviathan. 
.  .  .  I  hate  it  as  one  hates  sin  or  pestilence  or  the  color 
work  in  a  ten-cent  magazine.  I  despise  its  very  vastness  and 
power.  It  has  the  poorest  millionaires,  the  littlest  great  men, 
the  haughtiest  beggars,  the  plainest  beauties,  the  dolefullest 
pleasures  of  any  town  I  ever  saw.  I  could  stand  a  town  ruled 
by  wealth  or  one  ruled  by  an  aristocracy;  but  this  one  is 
ruled  by  its  lowest  ingredients.  Claiming  culture,  it  is  the 
crudest;  asserting  its  pre-eminence,  it  is  the  basest;  denying 
all  outside  values  and  virtues,  it  is  the  narrowest. 

0.  Henry  died  in  1910,  and  two  years  afterward  the 
Nezu  York  Sunday  Times  devoted  an  entire  page  to  an 
interview  with  Miss  Mary  de  G.  Trenholm,  chief  organ- 
izer and  head  worker  of  the  important  Settlement  House 
at  Seventy-second  Street  and  the  East  River.  Since  by 
Ijirth  and  breeding  this  lady  is  of  America's  "very  best," 
and  by  vocation  is  devoted  to  the  uplift  of  the  lowly,  her 
experiences  and  observations  include  all  classes  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom  of  O.  Henry's  ''wonderful,  cruel,  en- 
chanting, bewildering,  fatal,  great  city!"  Condensing  and 
rearranging  the  paragraphs  but  preserving  nearly  ver- 
batim the  language  of  this  remarkable  interview,  let  us, 
if  possible,  grasp  the  full  import,  the  true  inwardness 
of  what  it  says,  its  first  sentence  being  the  following,  (the 
italics  my  own)  : 

Extravagance,  inefficiency,  immodesty,  ar^d  selfishness  are 
what  this  town  is  breeding  in  its  women.     .     .     . 

The  American  woman,  rich  and  poor  and  young  and  old, 


V 

50  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

in  these  days  is  the  most  selfish  woman  in  the  world,  and 
the  New  York  woman  between  thirty  and  forty  is,  I  verily 
believe,  the  most  frivolous  the  world  has  ever  known.  Ameri- 
can women  have  always  been  extravagant  in  dress ;  they  never 
have  been  so  terribly  extravagant  as  they  are  now.  Ameri- 
can women  have  rarely  been  immodest  in  their  dress;  now, 
in  this  year  of  1912,  they  have  become  outrageously  im- 
modest. .  .  .  The  story  of  an  old  lady  who  came  to  town 
lately  to  visit  relatives  is  illustrative.  On  the  third  morning 
after  her  arrival  she  was  found  packing  her  trunk  for  de- 
parture. "But,  dear,"  expostulated  her  daughter,  "you  were 
to  stay  a  month."  "I  was,  but  I'm  not.  The  first  evening  I 
was  here  you  took  me  to  hear  a  man  who  tried  to  take  away 
my  God,  and  on  the  second  evening  I  heard  a  dress  reformer 
who  tried  to  take  away  my  petticoats! — I'm  going  home! 
.  .  ."  There  was  more  truth  than  poetry  in  this  indict- 
ment, for  the  women  of  New  York  are  frequently  without  a 
God  and  just  now  very  frequently  without  a  petticoat.  A  man 
recently  told  me  he  can  no  longer  tell  decent  women  from 
loose  women  on  the  street;  yet  five  yars  ago  such  dress  did 
not  exist. 

At  present  two  things  are  working  with  terrific  energy 
and  force  toward  the  ruin  of  the  working  girl,  and  both  are 
sins  which  seep  down  upon  her  from  higher  levels.  They 
are  the  dress  and  the  dancing  she  copies  from  the  girls  who 
do  not  have  to  work. 

Society  girls,  working-girls,  and  the  mothers  of  both  are 
dressing  viciously,  and  as  long  as  rich  girls  dress  as.  they 
do  the  working  girl  will  copy  them.  Yet  these  fashions  mean 
wild  extravagance,  they  mean  loss  of  delicacy,  they  mean 
young  men  sent  wrong  or  changed  to  cynics  about  woman- 
kind.    .     .     . 

Then  consider  the  dancing,  the  'bunny  hug*  and  the  'turkey 
trot'  that  First  Avenue  and  Cherry  Hill  have  borrowed  from 
Fifth  Avenue  and  Newport.  What  a  wild  craze  for  the  young 
people  of  the  nation  to  take  up!  The  society  women  could 
have  stopped  it.     Why  didn't  they?     What  is  the  meaning 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  51 

of  their  failure  to?  I  hesitate,— I  find  it  impossible,— to  com- 
ment adequately  on  the  state  of  things  which  has  transplanted 
dances  originating  in  the  worst  dives  of  San  Francisco  into 
the  great  drawing-rooms  of  our  "best  people."  The  river- 
ward  girls  insist  on  these  extraordinary  dances  because  the 
newspapers  tell  them  that  they  are  in  high  favor  in  "real 
society."  Our  settlement  started  a  crusade,  and  even  brought 
official  pressure  to  bear  against  them  all  over  the  East  Side. 
But  what  did  it  amount  to?  The  indecent  dancing  goes  on 
every  night,  and  the  dance  halls  are  keeping  up  their  work 
of  ruining  young  girls  and  wrecking  young  men.  I  cannot 
emphasize  too  strongly  my  horror  of  the  situation  to-day  in 
New  York  City.    It  is  paralyzing.     .     .     . 

That  the  first  attribute  of  a  good  woman  must  be  modesty 
has  been  recognized  through  all  time.  Yet  not  only  is  the 
rising  generation  of  our  girls  handicapped  in  this  regard  by 
the  dances  and  fashions  which  are  reaching  down  from  the 
upper  to  corrupt  the  lower  strata;  .  .  .  the  girl  who  lives 
in  a  New  York  tenement  can  not  grow  up  sweetly  modest 
after  the  ideals  of  our  grandmothers,  for  she  can  have  no 
privacy.  The  herding  in  our  cities, — the  very  nature  of  our 
living, — has  so  destroyed  our  homes  that  they  are  no  longer 
attractive  and  our  women  have  lost  taste  for  them.  The 
working-girl,  even  if  she  lives  with  her  family,  has  practically 
no  home  to  go  to  after  work  is  done.  She  has  a  little  space 
in  a  small  flat  in  a  crowded  tenement  in  a  crowded  quarter 
and  is  thrown  in  continual  contact  at  all  hours  with  father, 
brothers  and  often  boarders  in  all  stages  of  the  imtimacies 
of  life.  ...  If  she  lives  away  from  home  in  a  tenement 
boarding  house  along  with  other  working  girls  and  men  and 
boys  her  situation  may  be  looked  upon  as  hopeless,  for  she  is 
then  learning  that  which  she  should  never  know  and  learning 
nothing  which  she  should  learn.  The  present  very  poor  New 
York  girl  is  not  a  modest  girl,  nor  can  be;  the  present  New 
York  rich  girl  does  not  seem  to  wish  to  be!    .    .    . 

Nor  is  the  New  York  girl  unselfish;  and  unselfishness  must 
come  next  to  modesty  in  the  equipment  of  a  girl  who  is  to 


52  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

be  a  faithful  wife  and  a  good  mother.  In  the  old  American 
days  the  farms  were  cruder  than  the  cities,  but  now  the 
cities  are  cruder  than  the  farms  and  are  doing  everything 
possible  to  pull  down  and  destroy  the  home  we  used  to  hold 
so  essential.  This  city-district  numbers  80,000  people  and 
/  don't  know  of  a  room  in  this  neighborhood  where  a  whole 
family  can  get  together  at  the  table  at  the  same  time  for  a 
meal!  The  majority  of  the  people  are  "free  thinkers"  and 
for  them  all  there  are  only  four  places  of  worship ! 

New  York's  biggest  problem  is  not  its  police,  its  fires,  or 
its  sanitation;  it's  girls.  .  .  .  The  problem  of  the  health, 
the  morals  and  the  education  of  American  working  girls, 
the  future  mothers  of  a  large  part  of  the  coming  nation,  is 
the  greatest  of  the  lot  now  confronting  the  nation.  The 
presidential  campaign, — Roosevelt,  Taft,  Wilson,  the  Tariff, 
the  Canal,  the  Trusts, — all  such  questions  are  quite  insig- 
nificant compared  to  it.  We've  got  to  save  them,  the  work- 
ing girls;  but  though  I  speak  especially  of  them,  my  ex- 
perience has  taught  me  that  in  order  to  do  so  we  must  begin 
with  the  girl  who  does  not  work.  There  is  a  subtle  poison 
harming  all  our  femininit)', — girls  in  general  in  the  United 
States  and  girls  in  general  in  New  York  Cit}', — a  poison  that 
is  not  working  upward  from  poverty  into  prosperity,  but 
downward  from  prosperity  into  poverty. 

How  well-deserved  is  Miss  Trenholm's  indictment  of 
contemporary  upper-class  womanhood,  the  society  lead- 
ers as  caught  by  the  camera  for  the  New  York  Sunday 
papers,  are  ample  proof. 

See  them  seated  with  the  crossed  limbs  which  draw 
their  short  skirts  half-way  up  to  the  knee;  or  in  driving- 
coats  and  top-boots  as  from  the  coachman's  box  they 
tool  a  four-in-hand;  or  as  riding  astride  in  similar  boots 
and  hunting  togs  they  jump  their  mounts  over  fences 
and  ditches,  sometimes  grotesquely  hunched,  their  coat- 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  53 

tails  flying  in  the  air !  See  them  in  scanty  skirt  prancing 
violently  before  the  tennis  nets,  or  in  bare  feet  and  limbs 
throwing  themselves  about  and  thrusting  up  their  knees 
in  ''nature"  dances  in  the  open  air,  or  reclining  on  the 
sea-sands  in  brief  bathing  suits  which  show  the  whole 
length  of  their  stockings — their  little  girls  meantime 
running  round  with  legs  bared  high  above  the  knee  and 
thereby  being  trained  from  babyhood  in  non-modesty 
and  in  ugliness;  for  the  knee  is  a  hinge  and  a  hinge  never 
is  nor  can  be  the  curving  line  which  is  the  beautiful  line; 
it  must  be  the  obtrusive  line,  the  angular  line,  and  to  that 
extent  militant  against  feminine  suavity  and  grace.  Yet 
women  are  such  ''fools  and  blind"  on  behalf  of  their 
own  feminine  interests  that  for  a  decade  they  have  ac- 
cepted dress-fashions  that  emphasize  both  the  knee-hinges 
of  the  lower  limbs  and  also  the  still  greater  and  uncome- 
lier  ones  between  those  limbs  and  the  torso.  Formerly 
women  sat  and  walked  and  danced  icithin  their  skirts — 
thereby  so  far  as  possible  e-vanishing  the  hinges; — now, 
their  skirts  may  go  "any  old  way"  so  that  their  limbs  may 
have  the  adored  mannish  "freedom!" 

In  reminding  these  pleasure-loving  and  pleasure-seek- 
ing New  York  society  women  that  "from  time  imme- 
morial the  first  attribute  of  a  good  woman  must  be  mod- 
esty" ;  Miss  Trenholm  was  true  to  her  sex  in  the  deepest 
sense;  for  modesty  is  to  womanhood  what  the  bark  is 
to  the  tree, — the  outer  guard  and  protector  of  the  entire 
enclosed  organism,  and  equally  the  mystic  living  envelope 
through  which  alone  can  and  does  flow  its  life.  An 
immodest  or  a  non-modest  woman  is  spiritually  a  dead 
woman.     There  is  no  soul-life  in  her;  and  similarly  soul- 


V 

54  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

dead  or  dying  is  the  man  who  influences  her  against  mod- 
esty— as  Ibsen  showed  in  his  terrific  last  warning  to  the 
modern  conscience,  "When  We  Dead  Awake." 

But  in  her  yearning  over  the  New  York  working-girl, 
our  noble-hearted  philanthropist  does  not  indicate  the 
source  of  this  "poison"  which  "seeps  down"  from  the 
upper  social  levels  to  the  destruction  of  the  lower  ones. 
Does  she  know  whence  originates  the  evil  which  the  girl 
"higher  up"  transmits  to  her  humbler  sisters?  If  yes, 
why  does  she  not  warningly  label  it?  "What  is  the  use 
of  us  women  any  longer  concealing  from  ourselves  and 
ignoring  before  the  world  the  awful  fact  that  has  ever 
hounded — that  still  hounds — our  sex:  man's  moral  in- 
humanity to  woman? 


CHAPTER  IX. 

"what's  wrong  with  new  YORK?" — Conttfiued. 

Exploited  Girlhood. 

In  New  York,  as  in  all  great  capitals,  the  chief,  nay, 
the  indispensable  amusement,  recreation,  enjoyment,  sen- 
sation of  her  Multitudinous  Masculine  is  found  in  her 
pleasure  women  and  pleasure  girls — especially  the  latter. 

Within  the  last  decade  the  writer  has  been  present  at 
several  stage  performances  on  tour  from  New  York, 
which  were  to  her  harrowing  because  they  evidenced  so 
brutally  the  abandonment  of  the  feminine  ideals  of  our 
once  chaste  and  refined  and  chivalrous  country. 

One  of  the  occasions  was  Bernard  Shaw's  play,  "Man 
and  Superman'' — a  drama  which  proved  so  devilish  that 
to  me  it  seems  inconceivable  that  a  human  being,  the  son 
of  a  human  mother,  the  husband  of  a  human  wife,  could 
have  conceived  and  written  it,  or  that  any  American  could 
have  produced  or  acted  in  it.  For  its  plot  is  to  the  effect 
that  all  girls  are  and  must  be  men-hunters,  because  Na- 
ture, to  carry  out  her  purpose  of  perpetuating  the  race, 
drives  them  irresistibly  on  to  become  impregnated.  Man 
therefore  cannot  escape  them.  Reluctance  and  resistance 
on  his  part  are  useless.  Married  in  spite  of  himself,  man 
must  and  shall  be  in  order  that  the  girl  bent  on  securing 
him  may  become  a  mother;  and  if  a  girl  become  a  mother 
without   marriage,    equally   must    she   be    applauded    and 


V 

56  NEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

cherished  because  she  has  simply  fulfilled  the  great  im- 
perative end  for  which  she  was  designed  and  created. 

A  second  shocking  spectacle  was  at  a  Ziegfeld  bur- 
lesque to  which  I  had  been  invited  in  order  to  see  the 
stage  dancing  of  the  renowned  Mile.  Genee.  Her  danc- 
ing, by  the  way,  was  that  of  a  sylph  in  grace  and  a 
thistledown  in  lightness,  and  needed  but  obedience  to 
two  ignored  and  indispensable  canons  of  aesthetic  stage 
dancing,  namely — swaying  draperies  in  long  lines  from 
the  waist  to  the  instep  instead  of  the  usual  parachute 
ballet  skirts,  and  pirouetting  in  curves  from  the  knee, 
instead  of  at  right  angles  from  the  hip — to  have  been 
ideal  in  delicate  reserve  and  exquisite  femininity;  but 
her  ethereal  art  was  starred  in  a  depraved  and  vulgar 
burlesque,  the  "sensation"  and  climax  of  which  was  a 
procession  of  thirteen  girls  representing  poodles — ■ 
twelve  in  black  tights  throughout,  and  one  in  white  ones, 
with  fluffed-out  hair  and  with  paws  in  front  like  poodles 
on  their  hind  legs,  and  attached  to  each  of  them  a 
poodle's  tail  which  she  wagged  poodle-fashion  as  she 
minced  across  the  stage  ! 

Imagine  a  mortal  man  under  the  American  flag  de- 
voting the  young  women  of  his  company  to  the  public 
degradation  of  impersonating  female  dogs!  Yet  Ameri- 
can manhood  suffers  this  decadent  German  to  inflict  upon 
helpless  girlhood  similar  outrages  every  season  and  fills 
the  seats  of  his  theatres  in  enjoyment  of  them! 

Another  to  me  incredible  profanation  was  perpetrated 
by  the  New  York  Hippodrome  Company  in  an  acrobatic 
act  by  a  woman  and  two  men.  One  of  the  latter  stood 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  other  and  then  the  woman,   in 


NEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  57 

tights  and  trunks  of  course,  swung  herself  up  to  the 
shoulders  of  the  second.  A  moment — and  she  was  stand- 
ing on  her  head  upon  his  head,  her  arms  outstretched 
for  balancing,  her  limbs  and  feet  together  straight  up 
in  the  air.  Still  another  moment,  and  the  limbs  unclosed 
and  on  each  side  slowly  descended  until  they  lay  flat  and 
parallel  with  her  outstretched  arms  and  hands.  As  she 
achieved  this  fearful  feat,  the  pink  of  her  upside-down 
face,  neck,  and  arms  contrasting  with  the  white  of  her 
fleshings  and  the  darker  shade  of  her  trunks,  made  her 
seem  like  some  monstrous  and  horrible  Flower  from  the 
Pit  that  for  an  instant  was  poising  and  waving  before 
the  huge  audience  of  her  human  brothers  and  sisters. 
Ah — imagine  devoting  a  girl's  miraculous  and  sacred 
frame  to  such  uses ! 

Examples  could  be  multiplied;  but  side  by  side  with 
the  imported  desecrations  of  American  ideals  which  peo- 
ple have  to  pay  to  witness,  must  be  classed  the  recent 
free  street  exhibitions  of  girlhood  and  womanhood  as 
costumed  in  fashions  designed  by  men, — designed  prac- 
tically for  men,  manufactured  by  men,  and  marketed  by 
men,  and  in  the  creation  of  which  there  seemed  to  have 
been  but  the  single  aim  of  displaying  as  much  of  the 
woman-physique  as  possible.  The  ungloved  hands,  the 
arms  unsleeved  nearly  to  the  shoulder,  the  throat  and  one 
or  more  inches  of  the  neck — all  bare ;  the  skirt  cut  smooth 
to  the  torso  and  below  it  so  scanty  that  walking  empha- 
sized every  line,  and  so  short  that  the  whole  foot  and 
ankle  were  exposed ;  beneath  the  skirt  evidently  nothing 
save  the  stocking  and  gauze  underwear  and  the  corset ; 
the  head  bare,  or  covered  with  a  hat  so  huge  and  hideous 


58  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

that  both  face  and  hair  were  extinguished.  Who  can 
deny  that  streets  filled  with  girls  and  women  so  costumed 
gave  the  effect  of  being  filled  only  with  bodies  ?  So  elimi- 
nated from  one's  consciousness  were  the  faces  belonging 
to  the  bodies  that  one  could  not,  as  it  were,  discern  them 
amid  those  uncovered,  tanned,  and  generally  ugly  hands 
and  arms,  those  blatant  feet  and  ankles,  those  obvious 
hips  and  limbs  that  everywhere,  as  a  great  American 
citizen  justly  complained,  "hurt"  the  eye ! 

The  impression  of  the  crowded  sidewalks  was  not,  as 
beforetime,  of  feminine  faces  full  of  life  and  variety  and 
expression  coming  toward  one,  but  rather  of  the  monot- 
ony and  more  or  less  crass  materialism  of  women's  backs 
going  from  one!  "Whether  you  like  the  present  fash- 
ions," said  in  1911  a  New  York  woman-illustrator  to  an 
interviewer  from  the  New  York  Times,  "depends  entirely 
upon  whether  you  like  the  nude."  Of  course  she  liked  it ! 
The  men  artists  demand  and  will  have  the  nude,  and  so 
the  women  artists  and  the  women  art-critics  praise  and 
exalt  it  also — the  fatal  temperamental  impulse  of  aver- 
age women  being  always  to  give  men  whatever  they  want, 
let  the  consequence  to  womanhood  be  what  it  will ! 

And  what  the  real  zest,  what  the  soul  and  motive  of  all 
these  so  shocking  and  so  depraving  twentieth  century 
exhibitions?  Yes,  what?  Nothing  on  earth  but  the  sex 
degradation  of  girlhood  and  womanhood.  "All  the  arts 
of  expression  tend  to  keep  alive  and  in  activity  the  feel- 
ings they  express."  So  declared  a  great  thinker;  and 
can  American  Law  be  held  guiltless  in  that  it  suffers 
stage  managers  thus  publicly  to  destroy  modesty  in 
woman  and  thereby  stimulate  lust  in  man? 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  59 

To  suppose  that  with  mere  physical  girlhood  and  wom- 
anhood perpetually  thrust  upon  their  attention,  men  can 
be  other  than  profligate,  is  idiotic;  and  to  pretend  that 
girls  and  women  can  and  do  withstand  the  added  tempta- 
tion from  men  which  decadent  fashions  bring  upon  them, 
is  simply  to  lie. 

These  fashions  originated  in  the  European  stronghold 
of  the  Nude  in  Art  and  were  intended  as  the  glorification 
and  propaganda  of  the  nude.  The  quasi-artists  who  are 
the  famous  fashion-makers  of  Paris  resolved  that  wom- 
an's dress  should  no  longer  be  the  shield  and  protector. of 
woman's  honor  that  it  had  been  throughout  the  Christian 
centuries,  but  instead  should  become  the  revealer  and  dis- 
closer of  woman's  every  contour  as  the  female  of  the 
male,  thus  doubly  inflaming  the  male  to  an  unhallowed 
pursuit  and  doubling  the  danger  of  his  prey.  From  1905 
to  1915  woman's  dress  has  been  woman's  worst  conspira- 
tor against  woman ! 

Paris  fashions  are  first  displayed  on  the  stage  by 
actresses,  many  of  whom  are  mistresses  of  the  rich. 
Then  the  grandes  dames  who  are  the  wives  of  the  rich — 
in  order  to  show  that  their  own  charms  are  not  behind, 
accept  the  fashions  meant  to  display  the  charms  of  mis- 
tresses. They  know  well,  these  "great  ladies,"  what  their 
lords  want,  what  they  sigh  and  pine  for,  what  they  chiefly 
go  dissipating  to  enjoy;  and  the  great  ladies,  like  all  other 
women,  far  rather  than  fail  to  attract  and  amuse  and 
pique  and  please  their  men,  will  imperil  their  own  souls 
and  wreck  their  sex  and  with  it  their  country. 

And  thus  it  is  that  the  "mode"  of  the  day  is  decided 
upon  and  fixed.     No  semi-yearly  conference,  as  in  New 


V 

6o  A  El  J'    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

York  or  Paris  there  should  be  of  the  opulent  matrons  of 
the  great  American  cities  to  inspect,  discuss,  and  decide 
upon  the  momentous  problem  of  what  apparel  is  or  is 
not  womanly  and  modest  and  beautiful  and  becoming  and 
suited  to  the  years  and  the  occupations  and  the  means  of 
the  wearers;  but  the  grande  dame  goes  alone  or  with  a 
friend  to  view  the  new  "models"  as  they  are  displayed 
upon  the  living  "mannequins"  that  walk  about  the  show- 
rooms of  the  costumer.  By  this  latter  the  lady  is  cajoled 
and  flattered  into  ordering  something  that  will  be  above 
all  ''quite  different  from  every  one  else,"  will  be  "origi- 
nal"— "daring" — "novel" — whether  it  be  personally  be- 
coming and  suitable  to  herself  or  not. 

The  latest  "creations"  having  thus  been  endorsed  by 
the  leaders  of  both  the  upper  world  and  of  the  "half- 
world,"  the  great  American  merchants — the  John  Wana- 
makers  of  the  East,  the  Marshall  Fields  of  the  West — 
take  the  vulgar  and  demoralizing  garments  thus  launched 
by  the  immodest  vanity  of  actresses  and  mistresses  and 
the  baser  subservience  of  great  ladies,  and  in  cheap  ma- 
terials make  and  pile  them  on  their  counters  by  the  mil- 
lion. There  is  nothing  else  for  the  rank  and  file  of  wom- 
anhood to  buy.  They  do  buy,  and  the  working-girls — 
the  poor  ignorant  little  daughters — are  of  course  the 
chief  victims  of  it  all !  From  maidens  many  turn  into 
mistresses,  and  from  mistresses  many  turn  into  wantons, 
and  from  wantons  many  turn  into  hags,  and  some  into 
devils;  and  men, — MEN, — beginning  with  the  Artists  of 
the  Nude,  have  done  it  and  are  responsible  for  it.  And 
why  have  they  done  it?  Because  they  are  European 
either  at  heart  or  by  birth ;  and  Europeans,  where  maiden 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  6i 

innocence  or  .matron  virtue  is  concerned,  are  "of  their 
father  the  devH,  and  the  works  of  their  father  they  urill 
dor 

A  few  years  ago  I  heard  the  noted  artist  and  art-critic, 
Kenyon  Cox,  declare  on  the  platform  that  to  paint  or 
model  the  human  form  is  the  highest  exercise  of  Art,— 
and  about  the  same  time  a  standard  American  portrait 
painter,  who  is  also  a  devoted  nudist  said  to  me :  ''The 
woman's  body  is  the  most  beautiful  thing  there  is,  and 
it  has  simply  got  to  be  painted.  The  whole  art-world 
is  agreed  on  this.  Portraits  are  to  me  only  pot-boilers. 
I  paint  nine  nudes  to  one  portrait." 

Were  these  men  right?  They  were  wrong.  The  high- 
est exercise  of  Art  is  to  reproduce  the  highest  beauty ; 
and  in  woman  the  highest  beauty, — the  beauty  unique, 
unsurpassed,  and  unsurpassable, — is  found  from  her 
waist-line  up  through  bust,  shoulders,  throat  and  features 
to  her  lovely  brow  and  small  shapely  head  enframed 
by  waving  hair.  The  universal  consensus  that  the  Venus 
of  Milo  is  the  most  beautiful  single  art-object  ever  pro- 
duced, proves  the  above  proposition;  for  that  statue  is 
nude  only  to  the  waist.  Her  glory  is  in  the  faultless  as- 
cending lines  which  culminate  in  her  supreme  face, — 
the  human  face  being  the  special  revelation  of  the  human 
soul  and  mind.  Another  proof  to  me  is  the  fact  that  for 
one  man  who  falls  in  love  with  a  beautiful  figure,  ten 
men, — a  hundred  men, — are  "captive  to  a  beautiful  face! 

The  nude  and  the  near-nude  minimize  woman  into  a 
forked  animal;  and  where  is  the  beauty  in  a  fork?  In 
fact,  so  opposed  is  the  deep  sub-consciousness  of  woman- 


62  ^\EW    YORK:   a'' SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

hood  to  this  physiological  confession  of  herself,  that  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  sex  among  the  clothed 
races  of  all  history  has  ever  sought  by  flowing  robes  or 
by  long  skirts  to  conceal  what  woman's  aesthetic  instinct 
and  her  feminine  instinct  and  her  self-respecting  instinct 
would  fain  forget  and  make  man  also  forget.  It  is  the 
ruthless  and  profaning  modern  artist  whose  insatiable 
hunger  for  the  nude — comparable  only  to  the  thirst  of 
the  drinker  for  his  dram  or  of  the  gambler  for  his  game — 
by  eliminating  from  pictures  and  statues  innumerable, 
and  also  from  present-day  fashions,  womanhood's  im- 
memorial draperies,  has  well-nigh  banished  feminine 
beauty  from  the  earth  and  has  robbed  much  of  what  is 
left  of  its  mystery,  of  its  sanctity,  and  consequently  of  its 
spell 

THE  OLD  ARTISTS  MODEL. 

Paraphrased   from   Herbert   Kaufman's  "Prodigal  Daughter." 

Why  are  you  weeping, — Sister,  Sister, — 
Why  are  you  sitting  alone f 

I'm  bent  and  grey, 
And  I've  lost  the  way! 
All  my  to-morrows  were  yesterday ! 
I  traded  them  off  for  a  model's  pay: 
I  bared  my  graces  in  pleasant  places 
Where  paint  the  artists  with  winning  faces, 
My  beauty  I  sold  for  a  little  gold — 
Now  I  am  old ! 

Why  are  you  lonely — Sister,  Sister — 
Where  are  your  friends  all  gone? 

Friends  have  I  none,  for  I  went  the  road 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  63 

Where  women  must  harvest  what  men  have  sowed; 
And  they  never  come  back  when  the  field  is  mowed. 
They  talked  the  "Glory  of  Art"  to  me, 
And  I  joyously  posed  and  would  not  see 
They  were  simply,  only  "using"  me — 
Now  I  am  old ! 

Why  did  you  do  it, — Sister,  Sister, — 
Why  did  you  peril  your  soul?'* 

I  was  foolish  and  fair  and  my  form  was  rare; 
I  longed  for  men  friends,  and  I  did  not  care. 
When  we  know  not  the  price  to  be  paid,  we  dare, 
I  listened  when  Vanity  lied  to  me, 
And  I  ate  the  fruit  of  her  bitter  tree — 
Now  I  am  old ! 

Will  they  not  help  you  up.  Sad  Sister, 
Who  so  ruthlessly  pulled  you  down? 

I  have  no  claim, — for  the  artists  bought, — 
I  accepted  their  wage  for  the  youth  I  brought, 
So  much  an  hour;  so  they  owe  me  nought; 
I  have  no  hold,  for  t'was  I  who  sold : 
Once  I  lost  my  heart, — ^but  the  painter  was  cold, 
It  made  me  desperate, — turned  me  bold — 
Now  I  am  old! 

Is  there  indeed  no  pity,  Sister, 
For  the  once  so  flattered  and  sought  for  sitter? 

While  a  woman  is  lovely  the  artists  will  fawn, 
But  not  when  her  beauty  and  grace  have  gone: 
The  torso  heavy — the  face  thin-drawn. 
I  have  had  my  day;  I  have  had  my  play; 
With  the  winter  of  loneliness  I  must  pay — 
Now  I  am  old! 


64  '   NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

What  of  the  morrow, — Sister,  Sister, — 
How  shall  the  morrow  he?" 

I  must  feed  to  the  end  upon  remorse; 
I  must  falter  alone  in  my  self-chosen  course; 
I  must  hang  alone  on  my  self-made  cross, — 
For  I  bared  my  graces  in  pleasant  places, 
My  beauty  I  sold  for  a  little  gold. — 
Now  I  am  old ! 

What  of  the  artists, — Sister,  Sister, — 
Of  the  men  who  exploited  you  so? 

Those  who  stripped  my  soul  with  my  maiden  shape, — 

Those  who  held  me  a  "body"? — They  did  not  escape 

The  deadly  narcotic  exhaling  from  me 

As  a  woman  profaned !     Oh,  still  can  I  see 

The  gloat  in  their  eyes  as  I  dropped  my  clothes, 

And  they  eagerly  placed  me  in  pose  after  pose, 

Discussing    my    "points"    with    the    chum    who    strayed    in, 

For  little  they  cared  who  shared  in  their  sin. 

With  the  door  safely  locked  and  me  naked  within. — 

They  sketched  and  considered,  they  paused  and  they  smoked 
They  pondered  and  painted,  they  laughed  and  they  joked. 
Sometimes  they  were  brutal,  ofttimes  they  were  rude; 
They  chummed  with  the  rake  and  they  scoffed  at  the  prude; 
They  had  "got  back  to  nature"  and  felt  they  were  "free" ; 
It  was  "joy-life"  to  them, — desecration  to  me! 

"The  most  beautiful  thing  in  all  this  wide  world 
Is  the  maiden's  white  form !"    Oh,  like  incense  upcurled, 
Did  the  lovely  words  woo  me  and  lull  me  so  deep 
That  I  kept  on  and  on,  like  a  girl  in  her  sleep; — 

But  so  is  flame  "beautiful," — yellow  and  red 

As  it  wreathes  round  the  body  and  climbs  to  the  head; 


NEIV    YORK:   A    ^YMPIWNIC  STUDY.  6, 

Yet  when  it  has  passed,— behold  the  white  form 
A  horror  of  blister  and  black  in  the  dawn; 
And  nothing  now  left  but  to  sink  out  of  sight, — 
Out  of  mind, — out  of  love, — out  of  hope, — into  night! 

"Those  who    held   vie   a   bodyf"     Oh,    again    shall    they   see 

Myself  and  the  rest  they  persuaded  to  sell 

What  nothing  can  pay  for, — shall  see  the  poor  souls 

That  they  doped  with  their  guile  while  reaching  their  goals 

Of  ambition  and  greed;  why — their  Lust  of  the  Eyes 

Is  just  their  ART-GOD  with  his  bible  of  lies 

To  deceive  first  themselves, — then  their  models, — then  all 

Who  trust  what  they  say !     Yes,  indeed  shall  they  see 

Myself  and  my  mates, — we  will  all  cost  them  dear 

When  their  fingers  are  dust  and  their  memories  tell 

Of  what  in  their  studios  us  befell. 

And  they  find  what  they  did  to  themselves  as-  well ! 

For  the  God-heights  of  Art  staid  veiled  from  their  sight 
While  they  used  us  to  get-  their  "effects,"  in  the  light, 
Even  drove  us  outdoors, — made  us  stand,  lie,  and  run 
Under  God's  holy  sky  :  open  shame  'neath  the  sun  ! — 
Yet  who  cared  for  tiieir  paintings  of  nymph  and  of  nude 
Save  only  themselves  ?    Women  loathed  the  whole  brood. 
Were  they  beautiful?  no;  let  them  try  as  they  please, — 
Every  spring  brings  a  crop  with  the  buds  on  the  trees 
To   fade  and  to   fall   into  nothing,  like  leaves. — 
And  for  these  were  we  sacrificed, — only  for  these! 

Though  so  gaily  the  artists  bid  Conscience  farewell 

Some  day  only  She  will  be  with  them,  and  then 

Must  they  re-live  with  Her  those  old  studio  hours, 

When  they  copied  girl-charms  and  ignored  girlish  powers 

Day  by  day,  year  by  year,  till, — transformed  and  deformed,— 

God's  Image  was  lost,  so  that  what  they  achieved — 

What  they  really  and  truly,  completely  achieved. 

Was  sisters  in  ruins,  minds  shrunken  and  sere, 


66  NEW   YORK:  A  ^SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Hearts  blackened  or  broken  or  hopeless  or  drear 
With  "burning  for  beauty," — while  for  their  own  souls 
It  was  death  unto  death ; — 

"Oh — we  thought — we  believed — it  was  Art!"  will  they  wail; 
"It  is  hell !" 

Would  the  reader  know  the  atrocious  ignominy  of  dress 
and  gesture  to  which  a  once  artist's  model  may  be  re- 
duced,— let  him  look  at  the  colored  sketches  of  the  women 
dancers  in  the  after-midnight  cabarets  of  New  York  as 
printed  in  McClnre's  Magazine  for  June  1915,  pp.  26,  27, 
while  in  Mrs.  Lurana  W.  Sheldon's  "Night  Court"  he 
may  glimpse  the  final  goal  of  many  of  these  victims  of 
"man's  inhumanity  to  woman," — New  York  lowest  living 
layer ! 

THE  NIGHT  COURT, 

Your  Honor  has  done  me  a  favor 

In  asking  my  presence  an  hour 
To  gaze  on  the  Night  Court  in  session 

And  study  municipal  power. 
I  have  come  with  my  courage  undaunted, 

Though  only  too  sadly  I  feel 
That  before  what  you  call  me  to  witness 

The  tower  of  my  reason  may  reel. 

Who  are  these  strange  creatures,  your  Honor, 

Who  come  in  the  dead  of  the  night, 
Dragged  in  by  a  "cop"  or  detective, 

In  almost  incredible  plight? 
Whence  came  they,  and  what  is  their  calling? 

Whose  mothers  and  sisters  are  these? 
The  drunk  and  bedraggled  ones  wailing, — 

The  brazen  who  stand  at  their  ease? 


NEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  6? 

What  questions  are  these  I  am  asking? — 

They  are  queries  that  rise  in  one's  brain 
Before  such  demoralization 

Such  dreadful  affliction  and  pain! 
Why,  in  this  enlightened,  rich  city 

Has  womankind  fallen  so  low? 
These  reek  of  a  vile  degradation 

That  not  even  heathen  should  know ! 

Is  labor  so  packed,  over-crowded. 

That  work  can  no  longer  be  had? 
Are  wages  so  low  that  a  woman, — 

A  mother, — need  go  to  the  bad? 
Are  men  so  impotent, — such  weaklings, — 

That  woman  must  stand  in  the  streets 
To  trade  out  her  soul  and  her  body 

For  all  that  she  wears,  drinks,  and  eats? 

These  girls  in  their  teens  who  have  entered, — 

Pickpockets,  the  "nymphs  of  the  pave," — 
Who  branded  Sin's  mark  on  their  foreheads? 

Their  birthright  of  horror  who  gave? 
Are  men's  veins  so  full  of  beast  nature. 

Men's  bosoms  so  sordid  and  cold. 
That  humans, — aye,  (Children, — must  suffer 

For  being  in  feminine  mould? 

What  use  is  the  Night  Court,  your  Honor? 

To  me  'tis  but  splitting  the  stream 
That  flows  from  a  million  directions, — 

From  sources  that  no  one  would  dream ! 
What  forces  these  girls  to  be  wantons? 

What  teaches  them  evil,  and  who? 
Why  has  not  your  city  safeguarded 

Their  frailness  their  whole  childhood  through? 


68 


NEW    YOkK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


If  children  are  part  of  the  nation, — 

The  assets  of  city  and  state, — 
What  have  legislators  been   doing 

That  these  have  come  down  to  this  fate? 
"White  Slaves,"  aye,  and  worse,  are  among  them; 

Their  eyes  are  sin-hardened  and  blear; 
This  Night  Court  should  vi^iden  its  mission 
The  Preachers  to  Men  should  be  here! 


CHAPTER  X. 

"what's  wrong  with  new  YORK?" — Coficluded, 

To  account  for  what  is  ''wrong"  with  any  city,  any 
nation,  or  any  individual,  it  is  only  necessary  to  know  the 
real  religion  of  that  city,  nation,  or  individual;  for  the 
word  ''religion"  stands  for  the  relation  between  the  soul 
and  its  Maker — otherwise,  for  the  very  deepest  and  clos- 
est relation  there  is  or  can  be.  No  tie  can  possibly  ap- 
proach in  intimacy  the  tie  between  a  creator  and  the 
creature  he  has  planned  and  vitalized.  If  the  creature 
in  any  respect  misconceives  this  tie  and  so  hinders  the 
full  current  that  seeks  to  flow  from  his  creator  to  him- 
self, he  does  and  must  suffer  loss  of  power  and  perfection 
to  that  extent.  He  will  play  his  part  in  life  less  well  and 
less  nobly,  and  the  more  like  him  in  the  community  or  in 
the  nation,  the  less  well  and  less  nobly  will  that  commun- 
ity, or  that  nation,  play  also  its  part. 

Now  the  city  of  New  York,  religiously  speaking,  is 
chiefly  Catholic, — Anglican  CathoHc  (or  Episcopalian) 
in  her  endlessly  influential  society  classes,  and  Roman 
Catholic  in  her  enormous  foreign  classes.  Moreover, 
among  her  foreigners  she  counts  one  million  Jews;  and 
as  Jews  are  practically  Unitarians,  they  tremendously 
re-inforce  the  Unitarian  spirit  which  Thomas  Jefferson 
hoped  would  eventually  become,  and  which  in  fact  has 


70  NEiy    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

become,  our  national  religious  spirit.  Between  these 
great  preponderating  religious  strata  New  York  Protes- 
tanism  bulks  but  a  weak  and  shallow  layer.  True  that 
the  leading  Protestant  denominations  have  in  New  York 
their  respective  headquarters  and  publishing  houses;  but 
the  situation  persists  that  Catholicism  and  Judaism  in 
the  American  metropolis  are  mighty,  and  flamboyant,  and 
super-potent,  and  that  Evangelical  or  Trinitarian  Pro- 
testantism is  practically  obscure  and  mostly  overridden. 

A  brief  retrospect  may  help  us  to  realize  where  we 
are. 

More  than  one  hundred  years  before  the  embarkation 
of  the  Pilgrims  for  this  western  land,  Columbus  had  dis- 
covered the  New  World  and  Luther  had  rediscovered 
the  Old  Bible.  Columbus  had  sailed  under  the  commis- 
sion and  protection  of  the  Spanish  crown.  In  the  name 
of  that  crown  he  and  later  navigators  and  soldiers  ex- 
plored and  took  possession  of  the  Caribbean  Islands  and 
of  Central  and  South  America;  and  the  civilization  they 
planted  in  these  vast  territories  was  naturally  the  Spanish 
civilization.  This  civilization  was  the  Catholic  or 
"Bishop"  civilization  that  held  the  Church  as  supreme 
over  the  State,  and  the  Bishop  as  overlord  of  the  Church, 
because  he  was  the  sole  depository  of  the  Sacraments 
through  which  flowed  the  mercy  and  grace  of  God  to 
man. 

Simple  and  stern  was  the  formula : 

"Without  the  Sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's 
Supper,  no  salvation;  and  without  the  Bishop,  or  a  Priest 
consecrated  by  the  Bishop,  no  Sacraments." 

Such    is    the    quintessential    doctrine,  of    the    Catholic 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  71 

Church,  the  doctrine  held  by  all  true  Catholics,  the  doc- 
trine that  makes  them  "Catholics,"  whether  Greek  Catho- 
lics,. Roman  Catholics,  Anglican  Catholics,  or  (as  we  call 
them  in  the  United  States)  Episcopalians.  In  all  of  them 
the  Bishop  holds  the  Key,  and  is  practically,  therefore, 
the  Door  of  that  Church  which  was  founded  by  Christ 
for  the  spread  and  maintenance  of  His  Gospel.  To  be 
wholly  and  truly  within  that  church  you  must  enter  it 
by  that  "bishop"  key  or  door,  otherwise  you  are  only 
in  a  "sect" — only  in  the  vestibule  of  the  divine  edifice — 
if  even  that !  The  "covenanted"  mercies  of  God,  namely, 
the  forgiveness  of  your  sins,  daily  grace  enal^ling  you 
to  lead  the  Christ-life,  and  endless  heaven-bliss  after 
death,  are  not  surely  and  absolutely  yours  as  they  are 
the  "Catholic"  Christian's.  As  a  schismatic  and  a  sec- 
tarian, yours  are  only  the  "uncovenanted"  mercies;  that 
is,  God  may  extend  them  to  you  if  He  will;  but  they  are 
not  promised  to  you — are  not  certain  in  the  sense  that 
they  are  certain  to  the  Catholic.  As  the  Israelites  of 
the  ancient  world  were  God's  "chosen"  people,  entitled  to 
special  privileges  and  blessings,  so  have  the  Catholics 
nominated  themselves  God's  chosen  of  the  modern  world — 
the  only  legitimate  "inheritors  of  the  promises." 

But  Luther's  re-discovery  of  the  Bible,  and  its  trans- 
lation by  him  and  his  followers  into  their  native  tongues, 
shattered  in  many  minds  the  previous  universal  faith  and 
confidence  in  this  "bishop"  doorway  to  God.  Luther  and 
his  fellow  reformers  read  in  their  Bibles  Christ's  saying: 
"I  am  the  Door — the  Door  of  Eternal  Life  open  to  the 
whole  human  race,  and  into  which  any  one  may  enter 
who  feels  repentance  for  his  sins  and  that   faith  in   Me 


V 

^2  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

as  the  Son  of  God  which  makes  man  forever  forsake 
sin,  or  'self,'  and  follow  God,  or  'love.' " 

Many  English  reformers,  therefore,  understood  and 
practiced  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  only  as  outward 
rites  ordained  by  Christ  on  the  same  principle  that  the 
soldier  enlisting  in  an  army  must  put  on  the  uniform 
prescribed  by  the  government  he  serves.  In  themselves 
Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  neither  do  nor  can  avail 
anything  whatever  for  the  salvation  of  man  or  woman 
without  the  loving  heart  toward  God  and  man  and  equally 
the  transformed  life  which  evidences  that  heart. 

Thus  in  the  belief  of  multitudes,  the  great  central  doc- 
trine of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Succession  fell  from  the 
high  spiritual  throne  from  which  for  a  thousand  years 
it  had  towered  above  and  dominated  European  Christen- 
dom, and  the  Bible  was  exalted  in  its  place. 

The  Bible  gave  and  Luther  echoed  the  Magna  Charta 
to  all  Christian  men  and  women  that  they  are,  as  St. 
John  expressed  it,  "kings  and  priests  unto  God."*  Every 
human  being,  that  is,  must  be  his  or  her  own  "king," 
to  rule  him  or  her  own  self  according  to  the  unchange- 
able Law  of  Love.  Every  human  being  must  be  his 
or  her  own  "priest,"  to  offer  his  or  her  own  undivided 
self  as  that  "living  sacrifice"  unto  Love  which  Christ 
both  by  precept  and  example  enjoined  upon  every  one  of 
his  followers. 

From  Luther's  day,  then,  the  Bible  and  not  the  Bishop 
became  to  multitudes  the  supreme  authority  on  Right  and 
Wrong;  the  Bible  and  not  the  Bishop  became  the  highest 

*  Rev.  1:16,  and  5:10. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  73 

Court  of  Appeal  as  to  what  is  essential  and  what  non- 
essential in  constituting  a  Christian  Church. 

The  thousand-year  spiritual  rule  of  the  Bishop  in 
Europe  had  been  purely  masculine,  because  from  the  life 
of  the  Roman  bishops  and  priests  Woman  and  Home 
were  excluded.  Through  this  one-sex  rule,  as  all  un- 
tempered  by  mother,  or  sister,  or  wife,  or  daughter, 
humanity  had  suffered  so  terrifically  that  the  reaction 
against  that  rule  was  corresponding.  "Away  with  pre- 
lacy r\  became  the  bitter  wide-echoing  cry  of  millions. 
The  Lutherans  and  the  Calvinists,  the  Huguenots  and 
the  Dutch,  the  Scotch  and  English  Presbyterians  and 
Independents,  the  New  England  Pilgrims,  Puritans,  Bap- 
tists, and  Quakers, — all  founded  denominations  whose 
highest  officers  were  "elders,"  or  "ministers"  only,  or 
even,  as  with  the  Quakers,  laymen. 

Under  the  respective  banners  of  "Catholic"  and  "Pro- 
testant" the  two  great  religious  camps  into  which  Europe 
swiftly  divided  fought  out  their  differences  on  the  battle- 
field as  well  as  from  the  pulpit — until,  after  a  whole  cen- 
tury of  blood  and  agony,  English  contestants  for  the 
Bible  as  against  the  Bishop  exiled  themselves  by  tens  of 
thousands  to  the  wilderness-coast  of  North  America, 
there  to  obtain  peace  for  themselves  and  freedom  for 
their  convictions. 

Thirteen  colonies  were  founded,  of  which  two,  Vir- 
ginia and  Georgia,  were  from  the  first  chiefly  Anglican 
Catholic,  and  Maryland  was  for  a  short  period  Roman 
Catholic;  but  the  other  colonies  were  in  church  govern- 
ment either  Congregational,  or  Baptist,  or  Dutch  Re- 
formed, or  Lutheran,  or  Quaker,  or  Presbyterian.     Also 


74  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

a  very  remarkable  fact  is  that  during  the  hundred  and 
seventy-five  years  from  the  founding  of  Jamestown  to 
the  American  Revolution,  though  there  was  in  every 
colony  an  English  Governor  with  staff,  and  therefore,  of 
course,  an  established  Anglican  church  for  ther"i  to  wor-' 
ship  in,  there  was  never  settled  on  the  soil  of  the  thirteen 
colonies  any  bishop  of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Succession, 
whether  Roman  or  Anglican.  The  divine  Liturgy  of  the 
Anglican  Church  (two-thirds  of  it,  like  the  Lutheran, 
translated  from  the  pre-existing  Greek  and  Roman  Lit- 
urgies, and  practically,  therefore,  the  assembled  prayers 
of  all  the  saintliest  saints  of  fifteen  hundred  Christian 
ages)  was  in  use  throughout  all  the  Anglican  congrega- 
tions of  the  colonies,  but  their  clergy  were  either  colon- 
ists from  England  or  men  who  had  been  obliged  to  go 
to  England  for  ordination. 

"In  whatever  else  they  differ,"  says  William  Elliott  Griffis, 
"our  ancestors  and  their  descendants  agree  in  these  points; — 
the  liberation  of  religion  from  sectarian,  priestly  and  politi- 
cal control;  the  elimination  of  priestly  mediators  between 
God  and  man;  the  practical  abolition  of  priestly  monopoly  in 
religion;  the  separation  of  Church  and  State;  freedom  of 
conscience;  the  priesthood  of  believers;  the  rights  of  the 
independent  congregation;  the  liberty  of  expounding;  prison 
reform;  abolition  of  human  slavery;  the  salvation  of  infants 
and  of  the  seekers  after  God  in  non-Christian  lands;  the 
equality  of  souls  before  God ;  and  an  avowed  obligation  toward 
social  and  political  reform."* 

The  North  American  civilization,  then,  which  brought 
to  glorious  birth  this  new  nation  of  the  United  States, 

*  "Roger  Williams,"  by  Edward  J.  Carpenter,  Litt.D.;  Introduction, 
pp.  23,  24. 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  75 

was  emphatically  a  Bible  civilization  as  contrasted  with 
the  century-older  South  American,  or  Bishop  civilization. 

Whether  Catholic  South  America  has  led  Protestant 
North  America  and  the  world,  or  whether  Protestant 
North  America  has  led  Catholic  South  America  and  the 
world,  let  the  facts  decide. 

"By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

Surely  it  was  a  sufficiently  magnificent  and  unique 
achievement — this  founding  and  originating  a  Land  not 
only  of  Freedom  but  also  of  Peace  and  Plenty  to  which 
the  poor  and  the  oppressed  of  every  race  and  clime  were 
welcome — to  have  given  pause  even  to  the  romantic  and 
over-sanguine  mind  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  and  to  have 
made  him  hesitate  to  throw  open  the  American  suffrage 
and  the  American  offices  to  all  male  comers  on  such  all- 
too-easy  terms;  for  the  native-born  has  to  wait  twenty- 
one  years  before  he  can  vote, — but  the  foreign-born  only 
five. 

Awful  and  measureless  blunder ! — one  of  the  worst 
cases  in  history  of  "The  fathers  have  eaten  sour  grapes 
and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge" ;  for  to-day,  less 
than  a  hundred  years  since  the  death  of  Jefferson,  the  two 
civilizations  of  the  Protestant  and  the  Catholic — other- 
wise the  Bible  and  the  Bishop  civilizations — are  in  a 
soundless  but  life-and-death  struggle  in  this  land.  One 
or  the  other  of  them  must  go  down  to  eternal  defeat  for 
they  can  not  co-exist.  To  each  other  they  are  death ;  as 
absolutely  antagonistic,  as  mutually  subversive  and  de- 
structive, as  are  light  and  darkness,  as  are  noonday  and 
midnight. 

Therefore,  even  as  this  book  maintains  that  what  is 


76  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"wrong"  with  the  Universe  is  the  "Self"  of  Lucifer  as 
against  the  "Thou"  of  Deity,  and  that  what  is  "wrong" 
with  the  World  is  the  ruthless  non-Brotherhood  of  Man 
toward  the  Sisterhood  of  Woman  with  its  terrible  re- 
sultants of  masculine  tyranny  and  depravity  and  of  femi- 
nine poverty,  subjection  and  degradation — so  equally  must 
it  maintain  and  earnestly  impress  upon  its  readers  that 
what  is  "wrong"  with  our  country  is  Catholic,  i.e. 
"Bishop"  Foreignism. 

Foreignism   is   Catholicism:    Catholicism   is   Masculin- 
ism:  Masculinism  is  Luciferianism — and  there  we  are! 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE    ''bible"    and    THE    ''bISHOp"    CIVILIZATIONS. 

Our  native  and  adored  land  was  originally  a  Protestant 
land;  it  still  is  a  non-Catholic  land;  it  may  yet  again  be- 
come a  Bible  land,  whose  superiority  over  all  and  every 
"bishop"  land  will  inhere  in  the  fact  that  a  written  stan- 
dard which  can  not  change  itself,  and  which  has  remained 
practically  unchanged  for  nearly  two  thousand  years, 
is  because  of  that  very  fact  far  more  to  be  trusted  than 
can  safely  be  trusted  the  teaching  of  bishops  who  are 
superseded  by  successors  every  ten  or  fifteen  or  twenty- 
five  years,  and  who  each  in  his  term  of  office  inevitably 
emphasizes  that  portion  of  Bible  truth  which  most  appeals 
to  himself  and  his  hierarchy,  and  as  inevitably  more  or 
less  neglects  the  rest;  whereas,  when  the  entire  Book 
remains  the  standard  moral  authority  of  its  believers, 
there  glow  always  on  high  for  each  and  every  one  of 
them  to  read,  mark,  learn,  and  morally  assimilate — all 
the  precepts  and  examples  for  the  Good,  and  all  the  warn- 
ings and  examples  against  the  Bad,  of  which  our  so 
easily  tempted  human  nature  stands  in  need.  Thus  an 
ideal  or  all-round  Christian  manhood  and  womanhood 
are  more  likely  to  develop  in  a  Protestant  or  "Bible"  than 
in  a  Catholic  or  "Bishop"  civilization. 


V 

78  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

But  our  foreign  vote — which  is  the  vote  of  the  CathoHc 
or  "Bishop"  civiHzation — has  taken  away  the  Bible  from 
our  American  school-children,  so  that  by  now  nearly  two 
generations  of  American  citizens  have  grown  to  manhood 
and  womanhood  without  Public-school  Bible  Instruction. 
Only  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  children  go  to  Sunday 
schools ;  these  schools  are  held  once  a  week  for  one  hour, 
one-half  of  which  is  devoted  to  the  Bible-teaching;  learn- 
ing the  lesson  is  not  compulsory,  and  four  times  out  of 
five  it  is  not  learned;  attendance  is  not  and  can  not  be 
compulsory  on  either  pupils  or  teachers,  and  the  teachers 
are  usually  young  and  untrained  girls.  Can  a  more 
wretchedly  weak  and  inadequate  national  agency  be  im- 
agined than  this  to  which  we  confide  the  training  of  our 
multi-millions  in  the  vast  and  vital  subjects  of  Religion 
and  Morality  ? 

When  in  the  eighteen-forties,  the  potato  famine  in  Ire- 
land drove  over  here  within  a  few  years  a  great  host  of 
Catholic  Irish  who  settled  in  New  York  and  the  greater 
Atlantic  cities,  and  when  contemporaneously  the  conti- 
nental revolutions  of  the  same  decade  exiled  a  similar 
army  of  Germans  who  pushed  westward  to  Chicago  and 
the  Mississippi, — neither  Germans  nor  Irish  had  any  in- 
tention of  accepting  the  Bible-Americanism  they  found 
here ;  nor  was  it  very  long  before  the  Catholic  Bishop 
Hughes  in  New  York  Citj  had  ousted  the  Bible  and  Co- 
education from  the  New  York  public  schools.  The  first, 
he  claimed,  was  contrary  to  the  First  Amendment  to  the 
Federal  Constitution;  the  second  was  contrary  to  Catho- 
lic conviction  and  usage.  The  Ward  Election  system 
being  an  instrument  ready-fashioned  to  the  "good"  bish- 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  79 

op's  hand  (our  newspapers  always  call  the  Catholic 
bishop,  priest,  or  nun  "good"),  it  was  easy  enough  to 
oust  them.  It  was  but  to  see  that  sufficient  of  the  faithful 
lived  in  enough  city  wards  to  wield  the  balance  of  power 
and  elect  the  men  who  would  vote  in  the  city  council  as 
the  "good"  bishop  desired. 

But  let  us  inquire  whether  to  read  and  memorize  the 
Bible  in  the  public  schools  really  is  ''unconstitutional." 

The  North  American  colonies,  as  has  been  already  said, 
were  founded  mainly  by  men  with  Bibles  in  their  hands 
and  with  the  resolve  in  their  hearts  that  they  would  live 
closer  to  that  Bible  than  laymen  had  ever  lived  Defore. 
In  Massachusetts,  the  hamlets  as  soon  as  possible  after 
their  settlement  opened  schools  wherein  the  children 
might  be  taught  to  read  the  Bible — the  Bible  itself  being 
their  chief  reading  book.  Very  early  (1636)  Harvard 
College  was  founded,  and  with  it  special  schools  to  pre- 
pare for  it,  in  order  that  the  youth  inclined  to  the  min- 
istry might  be  able  to  read  the  sacred  Book  in  the  an- 
cient tongues  and  thereby  the  better  expound  it  to  future 
flocks.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Revolution  the  Bible  was 
read  and  memorized  in  all  the  schools  of  all  the  colonies 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  after  it  the  usage  remained 
unchanged  until  the  appearance  in  force  upon  the  New 
York  scene  of  the  Catholic  Irish. 

The  First  Amendment  of  the  Constitution  forbade  the 
establishment  by  law  of  any  form  of  religion  throughout 
the  United  States.  If,  therefore,  the  men  who  drew  up 
and  who  adopted  the  Constitution  had  supposed  the  read- 
ing and  study  of  the  Bible  in  the  public  schools  was  in 


V 

8o  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

effect  to  "establish"  a  "religion,"  the  Volume  would  of 
course  at  once  have  been  ousted  from  all  such  schools. 
The  fact  that  before  the  Catholic  hierarchy  made  war 
upon  it  such  exclusion  was  not  suggested,  nor  even 
thought  of,  and  that  the  Bible  remained  for  the  first  half- 
century  of  the  Republic  a  schoolbook  as  national  and  as 
universal  as  the  spelling  primer  itself,  proves  that  the 
founders  who  drew  up  the  Constitution  did  not  regard  its 
First  Amendment  as  prohibitory  of  the  Bible  in  the  public 
schools. 

For  whether  the  Bible  is  in  very  truth  the  "Word  of 
God"  or  only  the  Wisdom  of  Man  trying  to  formulate 
an  ideal  God  and  also  the  moral  standards  consistent  with 
such  a  God — still  is  it  the  great  Book  of  Right  and  Wrong 
which  towers  into  the  human  firmament  far  beyond  any 
and  all  similar  books,  and  which  because  of  its  trans- 
cendence has  been  the  dominating  ethical  influence  of 
Europe  and  of  both  Americas.  The  civilization  of  these 
continents,  even  if  haltingly  and  imperfectly,  patterns 
itself  upon  that  Book,  nor  can  any  wrong  to  an  American 
child  be  greater  than  to  let  him  grow  up  either  in  ignor- 
ance or  in  contempt  of  it.  Nevertheless,  the  Protestant 
American  Native  accepted  the  ruling  of  the  Catholic 
Irish  Immigrant  in  the  matter — the  Protestant  clergy 
insanely  fancying  that  the  Sunday  Schools  which  they 
had  at  the  time  everywhere  inaugurated,  would  make 
good  the  exclusion  of  the  Holy  Scripture  from  the  secular 
schools. 
.   Nor  zvas  this  all. 

Together    with    the    Bible,    general    history    was    also 
quietly   eliminated    from   all   the   grades   of   the   schools 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYI\^ PHONIC  STUDY.  8l 

below  the  High  Schools,  because  general  history  can  not 
be  taught  without  teaching  the  great  fact  of  the  Refor- 
mation of  ReHgion  and  of  the  Catholic  corruption,  op- 
pression, and  cruelty  against  which  that  Reformation 
was  the  ''protest."  Our  United  States  is  the  direct  off- 
spring of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  and  our  history 
has  no  adequate  explanation  as  divorced  from  that 
mightly  upheaval.  Before  the  eighteen-fifties,  general 
history  was  taught  throughout  the  public  and  all  other 
schools  of  our  country  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  best 
and  also  the  most  popular  compendium  of  the  day  being 
the  so-called  "Peter  Parley's"  history  as  compiled  for  its 
publisher  by  the  youthful  and  as  yet  unknown  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. 

But  the  Catholic  Hierarchy  intrigued  and  protested; 
and  to  please  them  the  American  grade-schools  univers- 
ally shut  down  on  this  study  of  General  History.  Not 
until  a  pupil  reached  the  High  School — this  being  only 
about  one  in  a  hundred — was  any  hint  of  any  history 
vouchsafed  him  save  that  of  his  own  country,  which,  of 
course,  did  not  begin  until  after  A.  D.  1600!  Every 
now  and  then  some  foreigner  remarks  with  surprise  upon 
the  prevailing  American  ignorance  of  the  history  of  the 
human  race.  The  American  subserviency  to  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  this  alone,  is  the  sufficient  explanation  of  it. 

Nor  is  this  all. 

The  newspaper  press,  being  chiefly  in  the  hands  of 
Catholic  reporters  and  editors,  for  years  has  been  under- 
mining American  pride  and  gratitude  toward  the  New 
England  element  of  American  ancestry  by  perpetually 
gibing,    sneering,    and    lying    against    "Puritan"    history. 


82  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

laws,  customs,  and  ideals.  For  example,  they  always 
speak  of  the  Puritan  "burning"  of  witches  in  Salem. 
Now — no  witch  was  ever  ''burned"  in  any  of  the  North 
American  colonies.  Nineteen  were  hanged  in  Salem,  but 
New  Englanders  can  retort  that  this  handful  is  infinitely 
offset  by  the  millions  of  women,  mostly  old,  who  in 
Catholic  Europe,  between  1300  and  1700,  were  tried 
and  executed  for  witchcraft,  many  of  them  at  the  stake. 
That  most  glorious  and  stainless  of  all  girls,  Joan  of 
Arc,  was  burned  alive  at  nineteen  by  Catholic  bishops  as 
a  "witch !" 

Another  specially  favorite  anti-American  fling  is  at 
the  Puritan  "blue  laws,"  one  of  which,  so  it  is  claimed, 
forbade  a  man  to  kiss  his  wife  on  Sundays.  No  such 
law  was  ever  on  any  statute  book  of  any  New  England 
colony;  but  Americans  accept  this  calumny,  as  they  do 
that  of  witch-burning,  because  they  are  so  ignorant  of 
their  own  history  that  they  don't  know  it  is  not  true.  It 
is  indeed  a  sad  and  bitter  fact  that  the  deprivation  of 
American  pubHc-school  children  below  fifteen  of  all 
knowledge  and  consciousness  of  Human  History  save 
only  the  history  of  the  United  States,  has  had  the  effect 
of  atrophying  in  the  national  mind  the  inborn  gift  and 
desire  for  the  vital  and  fascinating  branch  of  which  the 
poet  justly  said,  "The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

Made  bold  by  impunity,  the  Irish  Catholics  are  now 
claiming  that  it  was  the  Irish  who  fought  and  bled  at 
Bunker  Hill  and  who  were  the  mainstay  of  the  American 
Revolution  and  largest  factor  in  its  triumphant  success, 
though  the  truth  is  that  only  about  four  per  cent,  of  the 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  83 

American   troops   were   of   Irish   birth,   and   those   were 
mainly  Scotch  Irish  Presbyterians! 

How  inconceivable  in  Protestant  Americans  is  it  that 
they  countenance  and  support  a  newspaper  press  so 
overwhelmingly  edited  by  the  foreign-born  and  foreign- 
fathered  !  How  incredible  that  they  do  not  establish  and 
maintain  a  powerful  journalism  which  will  daily  cham- 
pion and  do  battle  for  themselves  and  for  their  fore^ 
fathers  J 


CHAPTER  XII. 


CATHOLIC  FOREIGNISM    VS.    AMERICAN    CO-EDUCATION. 


As  for  the  sex-segregation  brought  about  in  the  public 
schools  by  Catholic  influence — the  sewer-like  morality 
now  spreading  everywhere  among  the  American  people 
is  no  doubt  largely  due  to  this  separation,  since  to  mini- 
mize the  animal  side  of  sex  in  growing  boys  and  girls 
it  is  absolutely  indispensable  to  enlarge  the  intellectual 
rapport  between  them  and  to  cultivate  in  them  the  en- 
joyment of  mind  by  mind — and  this  is  and  only  can  be  at- 
tained through  co-education  under  enlightened  and  sym- 
pathetic adult  supervision.  With,  in  many  sections,  sixty 
or  more  per  cent,  of  the  public  school  teachers  Roman 
Catholics  who  disapprove  of  co-education,  and  with 
multitudes  of  Catholic  pupils  in  the  public  schools  from 
tenement  houses  so  overcrowded  that  the  decencies  of 
life  are  impossible  and  the  children  are  more  or  less 
demoralized  before  they  reach  school  at  all — it  is  not 
surprising  that  we  now  hear  from  many  quarters  that 
"co-education  is  a  failure"  and  that  it  must  be  given  up. 

''By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

Co-education  was  a  Protestant  American  evolution  of 
this  Protestant  American  people.  Nothing  is  or  can 
be  more  true  than  that  a  people  is  what  its  education 
makes  it,  and  the  patriotic  American  can  point  with 
glowing   pride    to    the    co-education    which,    and    mostly 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHOXIC  STUDY.  85 

under  the  now  often  decried  women  teachers,  has  sent 
American  manhood  to  the  very  apex  of  the  existing 
human  pyramid  and  constitutes  him  at  this  moment  not 
only  the  Leader  but  the  Hope  of  the  world.  How  did 
co-education  achieve  this?  Mainly  because  in  her  daily 
class-impact  w^ith  the  embryo  manhood  of  the  school-boy, 
the  American  school-girl  unconsciously  takes  over  from 
him  some  of  the  steel  fibre  which  is  the  manhood  quint- 
essential and  which  when  later  she  becomes  a  mother 
she  transmits  to  her  son.  Thus,  to  begin  with,  the  Ameri- 
can boy  is  born  more  of  a  man  than  he  would  have  been 
had  his  mother  been  educated  with  and  companioned  only 
by  girls — a  proposition  which  is  proven  by  the  fact  that 
in  business  enterprise  and  daring  the  men  from  the  West, 
where  co-education  is  still  almost  universal,  often  relegate 
eastern  men  to  second  place  even  in  the  latter's  own 
section.  Contrarywise,  while  the  co-educated  American 
is  the  boldest  and  most  determined  of  living  men,  he  is 
also  the  most  humane  and  chivalrous,  because  in  the 
school-room  his  women  teachers  and  girl  class-mates 
diffuse  through  his  spirit  those  emanations  of  the  "eternal 
feminine"  without  whose  softening  and  meliorating  in- 
fluences men  are  too  often  "hard  as  stone  and  dry  as 
stubble-wheat." 

The  American  boy  "sissified"  by  co-education  and 
women-teachers!  What  teachers  other  than  men  have 
the  Spanish  military  ever  had?  and  yet  in  the  Cuban 
war  they  crumpled  in  the  American  grasp  like  a  handful 
of  feathers !  If  "  'tis  an  ill  bird  that  fouls  its  own  nest," 
what  of  a  retired  Admiral  of  the  United  States  expressing 
from  the  platform  his  disapproval   of  the   co-education 


86  .\EIV    YORK:   A   SYMPIIOX/C  STUDY. 

which  is  the  special  differentiation  of  the  pul)lic  schools 
of  his  country  from  those  of  nearly  all  other  countries? 
If,  as  the  admiral  claimed,  co-education  "feminizes' 
boys,  why  are  not  the  sons  of  our  own  upper-class 
Americans,  who  now  almost  universally  are  educated  in 
boys'  schools,  the  most  masterful  men  we  have — by  which 
I  mean  the  men  who  dare  and  do  the  biggest  things  and 
who  achieve  the  greatest  results?  Notoriously  the 
Americans  who  are  subduing  the  globe  are  the  sons 
of  the  "plain  people" — of  the  co-educated  "masses"  and 
not  of  the  segregated  "classes." 

Yet  the  Catholic  priests  and  bishops — yet  the  daily 
press  which  they  inspire  and  control — together  with  a 
multitude  of  foreign-minded  and  therefore  women-despis- 
ing college  presidents  and  professors  and  school-principals 
and  school  trustees,  are  now  a  practical  unit  in  their 
warfare  upon  American  Co-education. 

Hardly  a  year  passes  but  some  co-educational  school 
or  college  is  turned  back  toward  the  Dead  Past  as  a 
single-sex — or,  more  branding  and  degrading  to  woman- 
hood still — a  "segregated"  institution.  Great  God ! 
Have  not  these  reactionaries  all  the  experience  of  Eu- 
rope, Asia,  Africa,  and  South  and  Central  America,  to 
warn  them  against  this  suicidal  policy?  Let  the  Heredi- 
tary American  take  it  from  the  present  writer  and  pon- 
der it  well — that  if  he  continues  at  the  behest  of  the 
foreign-born  and  also  the  foreign-minded  of  his  country 
to  give  up  co-education,  he  may  as  well  at  the  same  time 
resign  himself  to  the  inevitable  subsidence  of  American 
Manhood  Pre-eminence.  His  sons  will  not  be  able  to 
continue    his    inventive    and    engineering    and    financial 


.\EIV    YORK:   A    SYMI'HONIC  S'lUDV.  87 

leadership  because  they  will  not  he  born  as  well  as  he 
was  born.  They  will  be  the  morally  and  intellectually 
weakened  sons  of  mothers  brought  up  only  with  girls — 
and  this  will  be  "sissification"  indeed ! 

I  admit  that  co-education  requires  a  higher,  more 
spiritual  type  of  teacher  than  do  segregated  classes. 
Under  the  many  Catholic  teachers  in  the  public  schools 
who  do  not  believe  in  it  and  who,  being  Catholics,  are 
rar  more  sex-conscious  than  is  general  with  Protestants — 
co-education  may  possibly  involve  danger. 

But  that  is  no  reason  why  the  masterful  American 
manhood  which  itself  is  the  product  of  co-education 
should  distrust  and  abandon  this  benign  and  beautiful 
American  Institution — the  true  Mother  of  pure  and  happy 
marriages  and  of  beautiful  and  noble  children!  That  is 
but  a  reason  the  more  for  taking  co-education  under  its 
own  ardent  and  jealous  championship  and  studying  out 
and  guarding  it  from  whatever  risks  may  be  connected 
with  it. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


MORE     BISHOP      CIVILIZATION. 


Besides  taking  away  the  Bible  and  Co-education  from 
American  children  and  youth,  the  Catholic  or  "Bishop" 
element  of  the  United  States,  by  standing  solidly  to- 
gether, has  possessed  itself  of  the  vast  majority  of  the 
municipal  places,  offices,  and  emoluments  throughout  the 
towns  and  cities  of  the  North  and  West,  from  scrub- 
women, messenger  boys,  and  street  sweepers  to  the  town 
and  city  police,  the  clerkships,  school  teachers,  school 
trustees,  aldermen,  mayors,  judges,  and  town  representa- 
tives to  the  State  Legislatures.  In  the  largest,  richest, 
and  therefore  most  powerful  sections  of  the  Republic,  the 
government  has  passed  away  from  the  Hereditary  Ameri- 
cans in  whose  hands  by  the  foundation  American  prin- 
ciple of  Majority  Rule  it  rightfully  belongs. 

For  who  and  what  is  a  "Hereditary  American?"  He 
or  she  is  a  native-born  American  one  or  more  of  whose 
ancestors  voted  for  one  or  more  of  the  first  nine  presi- 
dents of  the  United  States, — Washington,  Adams,  Jef- 
ferson, Madison,  Monroe,  Quincy  Adams,  Van  Buren, 
Jackson,  and  the  first  Harrison.  There  are  said  to  be 
over  sixty  millions  of  them  in  the  country  to  thirty  mil- 
lions of  the  foreign-born-and-fathered-and-grandfathered 
whom  the  unrestricted  immigration  of  the  last  seventy- 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  89 

five  years  have  incorpoi>ated  with  ourselves.  Of  the 
latter,  according  to  the  Catholics  themselves,  over  sixteen 
millions  are  Catholics. 

Early  in  June,  1914,  the  newspapers  recorded  that  at 
an  open  air  meeting  on  Staten  Island,  New  York,  two 
thousand  Catholic  laymen  "listened  bare-headed"  to,  and 
passed  with  "acclamation,"  resolutions  protesting  against 
the  appointment  of  the  able  and  progressive  ex-mayor  of 
Rome  as  the  official  representative  of  the  Italian  Govern- 
ment at  the  Panama-Pacific  International  Exposition,  be- 
cause "the  said  Ernesto  Nathan  is  an  avowed  enemy  of 
the  Catholic  Church  and  notorious  for  his  insults  to  our 
Holy  Father,  Pope  Pius  X,"  and  therefore  "the  said 
Ernesto  Nathan  is  persona  non  grata  to  the  16,000,000 
CathoHc  citizens  of  these  United  States  as  such  pleni- 
potentiary." 

If  the  Catholics  of  the  United  States  are  sixteen  mil- 
lions, and  the  remaining  seventy-four  millions  are  non- 
Catholics,  in  fairness  and  justice  to  the  latter  the  for- 
mer should  fill  less  than  one-fifth  of  the  town  and  city 
offices  and  places;  whereas  the  almost  incredible  truth 
is  that  in  the  northern  half  of  the  country  four-fifths  of 
the  urban  positions  in  the  gift  of  the  people  are  in  the 
hands  of  foreign-bo^n-or-fathered  citizens  who,  as  one 
of  their  most  famous  bosses  admitted  on  the  witness 
stand,  "are  in  politics  for  their  pockets  all  the  time." 
Tammany  Hall  in  New  York  is  and  the  similar  political 
"machines"  in  every  northern  city  from  ocean  to  ocean 
are  nothing  but  the  Irish  Catholic  Solidarity  re-inforced 
with  equally  self-centred  Catholics  of  other  races.  The 
Irish  whom  the  famine  of  the  eighteen-forties  sent  over 


90  NEW   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

here  by  tens  of  thousands,  settled  in  the  North  Atlantic 
cities,  and  as  they  possessed  the  English  tongue  and 
were  the  first  Catholic  race  in  the  field,  they  naturally 
have  kept  the  Catholic  political  leadership  and  also  the 
labor  leadership  over  all  succeeding  Catholic  immigrants, 
the  revengeful  Italians  included. 

In  the  persons  of  newspaper  reporters  and  the  heads 
of  newspaper  departments,  the  same  all-permeating  ele- 
ment runs  the  great  city  journals  and  exploits  most  of 
the  sports  and  amusements.  Even  though  the  owners 
of  such  journals  may  be  Protestants  or  Jews  the  depart- 
ment editors  and  reporters  are  chiefly  Catholic.  Ameri- 
can Protestanism  practically  no  longer  possesses  a  city 
press  and  on  every  important  paper  is  an  employe  whose 
special  charge  it  is  to  see  that  nothing  unfavorable  to 
the  Catholic  Church  gets  into  its  columns.  Thus  in  read- 
ing their  daily  papers  non-Catholic  Americans  perforce 
read  them  through  Catholic  spectacles.  This  accounts 
for  the  decline  of  American  chivalry  and  courtesy,  for 
the  giving  up  of  the  word  "lady"  in  journalism  and  fic- 
tion and  largely  in  real  life,  and  for  the  crying  down  of 
swift  death  by  lynching  or  by  court  martial  as  the  only 
adequate  penalty  for  the  most  atrocious  crime  on  earth — 
the  crime  of  atrocious  assault  upon*Svomanhood  or  girl- 
hood by  manhood;  because  this  crime  is  always  unpro- 
voked, is  always  wilful,  is  always  deliberate,  and  it  also 
blasts  and  brands  its  innocent  victim  with  shame  and 
shunning  for  life.  There  is  absolutely  no  excuse  for  this 
crime,  and  there  should  be  absolutely  no  forgiveness  for 
it. 

Yet  such  is  the  fatuous  admiration  of  and  confidpn    ; 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  91 

in  the  national  policy  of  "toleration"  as  supposed  to  be 
laid  down  in  the  first  amendment  to  the  Constitution,  to- 
gether with  the  bombs,  the  bludgeons,  the  pistol-shots, 
the  blackmail  and  the  boycotts  of  these  gentle  and  grate- 
ful children  of  the  "bishop"  civilization — that  this  writer 
is  aware  of  only  two  authors  of  national  renown  and 
prestige  (the  Hon.  Thomas  E.  Watson  of  Georgia,  and 
the  Rev.  Josiah  Strong,  D.D.  of  New  York)  who  have 
thus  far  had  the  courage  to  call  attention  to  the  Sleep- 
less Power  which  is  so  stealthily  mastering  and  trans- 
forming this  Republic.  The  American  patriots  who  to- 
day, are  rousing  the  nation  to  the  Catholic  peril — the 
editors  of  the  Protestant  Magazine,  of  the  Menace  and 
similar  publications,  are  men  who  until  their  various 
periodicals  and  papers  had  attracted  a  following,  were 
unknown  outside  their  own  communities  and  who  even 
now  are  as  much  as  possible  ignored,  despised,  and  dis- 
credited.* 

Within  the  last  twenty-five  years  the  writer  has  often 
spoken  to  American  men  about  this  Catholic  domination 
of  our  United  States.  Almost  invariably  has  she  received 
the  reply :   "Some  day  there'll  be  a  war." 

And  of  course  there  will  be  a  war,  unless  modern 
Ariericans  prove  even  more  degenerate  than  the  ancient 


*  When  in  1913  the  Hon.  William  Sulzer  was  Governor  of  the  great 
State  of  New  York,  he  was  warned  that  if  he  failed  to  sign  certain  bills 
which  would  give  the  control  of  the  New  York  City  Board  of  Educa- 
tion into  the  hands  of  its  Catholic  members,  it  would  end  his  political 
career.  He  vetoed  the  bills,  and  within  a  year  he  was  impeached  on 
trumped-up  charges,  tried  by  a  packed  senatorial  jury,  found  guilty  and 
turned  out  of  his  splendid  office!  And  the  ten  or  eleven  millions  of 
that  State  doubtless  still  continue  to  thing  they  live  under  "free" 
American  Institutions! 


92  NEW   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Romans  who  fought  under  Fompey  against  the  dictator- 
ship of  Caesar,  or  unless  they  find  out  and  follow  "a  more 
excellent  way." 

The  inventors,  the  engineers,  the  promotors,  and  the 
business  men  of  this  country  lead  the  world;  and  back 
of  them  is  the  American  farmer.  Is  it  then  conceivable 
that  these  farmers  and  thinkers  and  financiers  will  for- 
ever submit  to  be  politically  governed  and  exploited  and 
plundered  by  foreign-born  workingmen  and  their  Ameri- 
can-born-and-educated,  but  foreign-minded  because 
"Catholic,"  sons  and  grandsons? 

For  to  be  at  once  a  loyal  Catholic  and  a  i,oyal 
United  States  American  is  intellectually  impossible. 

Has  Protestantism — Mother  of  Home,  Mother  of  Lib- 
erty, Mother  of  Popular  Education,  Mother  of  Woman- 
hood Education,  Mother  of  Cleanliness,  Mother  of  Sani- 
tation, Mother  of  Sciences,  Mother  of  Invexitions,  Mother 
of  Comfort,  Mother  of  Co-operation,  Mother  of  Modern 
Poetry,  Drama  and  Fiction  and  forging  rapidly  to  the 
front  as  the  Nursing  Mother  of  the  Fine  Arts,  and  all 
because  she  is  at  heart  the  Daughter  of  the  Bible,  has 
She  sunk  so  low  that  she  will  permit  the  mighty  land 
which  her  Bible  led  and  dedicated  to  God  and  Christ,  to 
be  permanently  moulded  and  governed  by  the  Bishop 
Civilization  that  drove  her  across  the  Atlantic  in  the  first 
place,  and  which  hates  and  scorns  and  vilifies  and  under- 
mines her  now?  "Black  Protestants T  ''Stinking  Pro- 
testants!'' are  their  terms  for  us  among  themselves.  Yea, 
even  the  Catholic  urchins  in  the  street  cry  out  when  re- 
proaching one  another,  "O  you  Protestant  T 

Some  years   ago   in   Chicago   a  large   congregation  of 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  93 

Polish  Catholics  seceded  from  the  Roman  Communion, 
sent  their  leading  priest  to  be  consecrated  as  a  bishop 
by  the  "Old  Catholic"  bishops  of  Switzerland,  and  set 
up  a  'Tolish  Catholic  Independent  Church"  of  their  own. 
Desiring  after  a  time  to  affiliate  with  the  Episcopal 
Church,  this  bishop  and  one  of  his  priests  presented  their 
claims  at  a  meeting  of  Episcopal  clergy  of  the  diocese 
of  New  York  City.  The  Polish  bishop  was  asked  whether 
he  and  his  people,  calling  themselves  and  still  being 
Catholics  in  everything  save  submission  to  the  Roman 
hierarchy,  could  consistently  enroll  themselves  in  the 
"Protestant  Episcopal  Church," — this  being  the  latter's 
legal  title?  The  Polish  priest  who  was  interpreting  for 
his  bishop,  promptly  replied  that  "the  Poles  are  Catholics, 
and  being  Catholics  have  been  brought  up  with  the  idea 
that  a  Protestant  was  some  awful  thing.  However," 
added  the  Father,  'T  do  not  emphasize  that  the  Episcopal 
Church  is  necessarily  Protestant"  (here  there  were 
"laughter  and  cheers"  from. the  listening  clergy)  ;  "and 
if  they  ask  me  more,  I  say  that  at  the  present  time  we 
also  protest  against  the  Catholic  Church, — so  we  are  all 
'Protestants'  together." 

This  writer  earnestly  asks  the  Protestant  American 
reader  to  take  "a  realizing  sense"  of  this  Polish  cleric's 
remark  that  a  "Protestant"  is  "some  awful  thing" — as 
indicating  the  attitude  toward  our  seventy  or  more  non- 
Catholic  milHons  of  the  sixteen  or  more  Catholic  millions 
within  the  United  States. 

Here  is  a  gifted  Christian  people,  the  Polish  people, 
conquered  and  divided  among  three  alien  monarchies, 
(two   of   them   Catholic),   their   nationality,    their   flag, 


94  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and,  in  their  schools,  even  their  language  denied  them. 
By  millions  they  have  come  over  to  us.  Everything  in 
this  land,  every  right,  every  privilege,  every  office,  save 
the  two  highest,  is  open  to  them.  "There's  none  to  molest 
them,  none  to  make  them  afraid.''  They  live  in  peace, 
and  the  measure  of  their  prosperity  is  only  the  measure 
of  their  own  industry  and  intelligence.  The  political, 
educational,  and  philanthropic  institutions  under  which 
they  flourish  are  all  the  work  of  Protestants,  and  most 
of  the  direct  taxes  by  which  the  institutions  are  supported 
are  paid  by  Protestants.  What  rights,  privileges,  and 
happiness  they  have  here  are  all  evolutions  of  Protest- 
antism. Here  they  dwell  and  here  they  leave  after  them 
their  children;  and  yet  even  the  educated  class  to  which 
their  clergy  belong  is  "brought  iip  with  the  idea  that  a 
Protestant  is  some  aivful  thing," 

Now  if  our  educated  Catholic  foreigners  so  regard  us, 
what  must  our  ignorant  Catholic  immigrants  think  of 
us,  and  is  it  not  probable  that  the  nation-wide  war  of 
foreign  trade-unionists  upon  American  employers,  led 
as  it  almost  invariably  is  by  the  Catholic  Irish,  is  de 
profiindis  a  religious  war, — is  practically  a  war  of  Catho- 
lic against  Protestant, — is  an  expression  of  the  Catholic 
feeling  that  if  Protestant  capitalists  can  be  harried,  crip- 
pled, or  even  ruined  by  ever-mounting  exactions — so 
much  the  better  ? 

Yet  so  little  self-respect  and  self-assertion  have  we 
Protestants  of  the  United  States — so  little  gratitude  to 
and  reverence  for  our  Protestant  forefathers  and  found- 
ers— that  to  the  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  million  Catho- 
lics that   pour  down   annually   upon   us   we   never   teach 


AEH^    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  95 

one  line  of  that  Bible  which  inspired  and  is  the  soul  of 
our  civilization;  nay,  such  is  the  Paganism  to  which  we 
are  now  committed,  that  to  please  the  million  Jews  of 
New  York  City  we  no  longer  suffer  the  public  school 
pupils  of  that  city  to  hear  even  the  name  of  Jesus ! — 
whereas,  our  attitude  toward  all  our  immigrants  should 
be,  and  in  the  future  must  be,  or  our  mighty  Republic  as 
a  Republic  is  doomed; — ''Your  children  are  to  read  the 
great  Book  of  Right  and  Wrong  in  our  public  schools 
with  our  children;  your  children  are  to  learn  the  facts 
of  our  Protestant  history  with  our  children,  or  you  shall 
NOT  land  on  our  shores !" 

Vice-President  Marshall  said  lately  in  public:  "What 
is  needed  in  our  schools  is  more  God  Almighty." 

But  how  can  we  get  "more  God  Almighty"  into  the 
schools  when  we  keep  out  of  them  the  only  Book  that 
ever  told  the  world  about  Him?* 


*  Judging  from  his  name,  Judge  Thomas  Dowdy  of  Boston  is  an  Irish 
Catholic,  and  during  a  recent  session  of  the  Municipal  Court  at  which 
he  was  presiding  he  said:  "There  is  altogether  too  much  perjury  in  these 
courts,  and  it  has  got  to  stop.  People  come  in  here  with  no  idea  of 
telling  the  truth.  Attorneys  say  to  the  court  that  they  can't  make  their 
clients  tell  the  truth,  that  they  don't  know  whether  their  clients  are 
telling  the  truth  or  not.  Something  must  be  done  about  it."  The 
"something"  to  do,  and  the  only  thing,  is  to  teach  the  Ten  Command- 
ments to  the  children  in  the  Public  Schools  and  to  restore  Bible-reading 
therein;  and  how  would  Judge  Dowdy  and  his  co-religionists  relish  this? 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  WARD  AND  ELECTION   DISTRICT  SYSTEMS 

Is  there  then  any  peaceful  policy  that  can  lift  the  yoke 
of  the  Roman  Bishop  civilization  from  this  our  American 
Bible  civilization  which  it  is  now  so  terrorizing  and  de- 
moralizing and  supplanting? 

One  peaceful  remedy,  and  one  alone,  could  lift  it,  and 
that  is — Personal  instead  of  Area  Representation;  other- 
wise the  abolition  of  Wards  in  all  towns  and  cities  with 
the  election  at  large  of  all  Councilmen  from  the  whole 
community, — and  similarly  the  abolition  of  the  Election 
Districts  throughout  all  the  States  with  the  election  at 
large  from  each  State  as  a  whole,  of  its  State  and  of  its 
Congressional  Representatives  and  Senators. 

"Just  as  the  Angles,  Saxons,  and  other  Teutonic  races 
who  conquered  Britain  brought  to  their  new  homes  their 
kinship,  their  village  communities,  and  their  settled 
framework  of  society  with  its  own  laws  and  customs  and 
a  certain  rude  representation  in  local  affairs"  so  did  their 
descendants  a  thousand  years  later  bring  to  the  North 
American  coasts  a  similar  "settled  framework,"  and  they 
founded  it,  as  the  first  was  founded,  upon  local  repre- 
sentation. 

The  "town-meeting"  of  New  England  began  with  the 
compact  of  the  men-pilgrims  on  the  Mayflower  and  landed 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  97 

with  them  and  with  all  successive  New  England  pioneers. 
For  the  first  generation  (1620-1664)  only  church  mem- 
bers were  allowed  to  vote;. but  thereafter  the  landholders 
of  New  England  and  of  all  the  colonies  south  of  her 
were  the  voters  of  their  respective  town-meetings,  and 
when  the  needs  and  interests  of  any  colony  required 
mutual  consultation  and  joint  action,  each  town  sent  one 
or  more  of  its  responsible  voters  to  represent  it  in  the 
colonial  council.  In  turn,  the  stress  of  the  American 
Revolt  from  England  caused  these  councils  to  send  to  the 
Continental  Congress  delegates  representing  each  colony. 

It  was  not  until  after  the  Revolution  that  men  could 
become  voters  merely  because  they  were  twenty-one  years 
old  and  had  been  a  certain  number  of  years  in  the  coun- 
try and  of  months  in  their  voting  district.  During  the 
formative  period  of  American  Institutions  which  now 
proves  to  have  been  our  "great"  period,  voters  were 
obliged  to  have  property  or  income  enough  to  show  that 
they  belonged  to  the  class  of  "responsible"  citizens.  In 
those  days  men  of  so  little  value  to  the  community  that 
they  paid  no  taxes  were  not  trusted  to  vote  away  the 
money  of  those  who  did.  Such  a  state  of  affairs  as  that 
of  the  City  of  Boston  in  1906 — when  her  whole  Board  of 
Aldermen  paid  all  of  them  together  only  seven  or  eight 
hundred  dollars  in  taxes,  but  voted  upon  a  city  expen- 
diture of  over  forty  millions, — would  have  been  incon- 
ceivable. 

Thus  the  original  British  suffrage  represented  land,  or 
area,  and  the  original  American  suffrage  that  sprang  from 
it  represented  the  same  thing.  A  voter  must  be  a  land- 
owner or  a  land  tenant.     Therefore  it  was  not  men  that 


V 

98  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

were  represented;  it  was  acres.  The  "brotherhood"  en- 
thusiasm of  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  with  which  Jeffer- 
son so  deeply  sympathized,  threw  Jefferson's  influence 
and  that  of  his  followers  into  making  voters  out  of  male 
citizens  simply  because  they  were  men  twenty-one  years 
old.  Moreover,  after  the  Jeffersonian  Party  came  into 
power,  it  needed  voters  to  keep  it  there.  Consequently 
as  *'men"  only,  male  voters  have  ever  since  poured  into 
our  naturalization  ranks. 

Unhappily,  the  oversight  was  made  that  though  men 
no  longer  needed  to  be  property-owners  in  order  to  vote, 
they  could  after  all  only  vote  within  the  specified  dis- 
trict in  which  at  the  time  they  were  living,  and  only  for 
a  candidate  domiciled  in  the  same  district.  Whether  vot- 
ing for  town  or  for  state  or  for  national  legislature  they 
were  alike  restricted  to  an  area. 

And  from  this  political  paradox  and  this  alone,  flows  the 
tremendous  degeneration  and  disappointment  of  Ameri- 
can Politics.  The  ''best"  or  standard  American  is  not 
in  politics.  He  is  rarely  elected  to  office.  Very  often  he 
does  not  even  vote.  He  can't  be  elected  to  any  office 
except  from  the  petty  district  in  which  he  lives,  and  to 
ask  it  from  or  to  companion  with  the  foreign-born-and- 
fathered  voters  within  whose  gift  it  too  often  is,  goes 
too  much  against  the  grain.  Furthermore,  he  knows  that 
if  he  did  get  into  the  town  council  or  the  state  legislature 
he  would  meet  there  such  a  collection  of  limited  spirits 
as  representatives  from  their  limited  districts,  that  he 
could  effect  little  for  the  worth-while  things.  And  so 
the  Hereditary  American  keeps  out  of  politics  and  his 
countrv  suffers  "in  the  head  and  in  the  members"  and 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


99 


our  "democratic  institutions"  get  the  blame  and  the  scorn ! 
Doubtless  this  writer  would  have  blamed  them  too, 
but  that  it  was  her  privilege  many  years  ago  to  hear  the 
disappointment  explained  and  the  remedy  offered  by 
the  briUiant  and  profound  Charles  Sanders  Peirce  of  Har- 
vard, later  distinguished  as  the  originator  of  the  cele- 
brated "Pragmatic  Philosophy." 


CHAPTER  XV. 

A  philosopher's  political  diagnosis. 

The  period  was  that  within  five  years  after  the  Civil 
War,  when,  as  already  stated  in  Part  I  of  this  work,  the 
two  influential  New  York  editors,  E.  L.  Godkin,  of  the 
Nation,  and  George  William  Curtis,  of  Harper's  Weekly, 
had  begun  their  propaganda  for  Civil  Service  Reform 
after  the  British  model  as  the  sole  possible  salvation  for 
American  politics. 

Mr.  Peirce's  comment  upon  their  movement  was  as 
follows. 

These  fellows  are  on  the  wrong  track.  The  radical  trouble 
in  American  politics  is  not  that  men  are  appointed  to  office 
without  due  examination  as  to  fitness,  though  I  grant  this 
to  be  an  evil  and  that  their  demand  for  compulsory  examina- 
tions for  civil  service  offices  ought  to  be  conceded.  But  sup- 
pose these  desired  examinations  established  and  all  Civil 
Service  aspirants  obliged  to  pass  them;  the  chief  failure  in 
modern  American  poHtics  would  not  be  remedied,  and  this 
is, — that  our  best  men  are  no  longer  attracted  to  or  found 
either  in  Congress,  in  our  State  Legislatures,  or  in  our  town 
and  city  councils. 

In  proportion  we  have  as  many  able  and  high-minded  men 
in  the  country  as  there  were  in  the  days  of  the  Founders, 
but  they  don't  and  won't  go  into  politics,  and  so  politics  are 
left  to  the  inferior  types  among  us, — to  the  petty  Americans 
and  to  venal  foreigners. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  lOl 

And  why?  Because  the  working  of  the  ward  and  district 
election-systems  which  we  brought  over  from  England  bars 
our  great  men. 

No  man  can  be  elected  to  Congress  save  from  the  con- 
gressional district  wherein  he  resides.  No  man  can  be  elected 
to  a  town  or  city  council  save  from  the  ward  wherein  he 
resides.  A  man  can  not  go  independently  before  this  whole 
State  of  Massachusetts,  for  instance,  which  sends  ten  men 
to  the  House  of  Representatives  in  Washington,  and  say  to 
the  voters :  "Such  and  such  are  my  national  political  prin- 
ciples. If  one-tenth  of  the  voters  of  the  State  are  in  sym- 
pathy with  them,  and  from  my  life-record  believe  that  I  can 
adequately  represent  them,  and  will  vote  for  me  accordingly, 
then  these  principles  of  ours  can  be  voiced  on  the  floor  of 
Congress." 

Nor  can  a  man's  friends  put  him  in  independent  nomination 
before  all  the  voters  of  Massachusetts  and  say:  "This  can- 
didate stands  for  principles  which  are  also  our  principles,  and 
such  and  such  is  his  record  in  his  community  for  character 
and  ability.  Will  one-tenth  of  you  help  us  elect  him?  If 
you  will,  we  shall  then  be  worthily  represented  in  Wash- 
ington." 

No,  (continued  Mr.  Peirce)  let  a  man's  principles,  character 
and  achievement  be  what  they  may,  he  can  only  be  nominated 
and  voted  into  legislative  office  in  his  own  residence-district, 
and  if  to  all  his  other  qualifications  he  can  not  add  personal 
popularity  with  the  Toms  and  Dicks  and  Pats  and  Mikes  of 
that  district,  he  can  not  be  elected. 

And  suppose  he  is  elected.  His  term  is  but  for  two  years, 
and  while  he  is  serving  in  Congress  some  man  in  his  dis- 
trict is  ceaselessly  wire-pulling  to  supplant  him,  so  that  he 
can  feel  little  or  no  security  or  satisfaction  in  his  legislative 
position. 

Since,  then,  it  is  the  "personal  equation"  and  not  a  man's 
merit  or  his  talent  that  decides  his  political  fate,  respected 
and  self-respecting  Americans — men  able  and  accustomed  to 
command  success  in  other  directions  chiefly  on  their  talents 


102  NEW   YORK:  A   hVMPHONIC  STUDY. 

and  merits,  will  not  demean  themselves  to  this  condition. 
The  result  is,  as  I  said  before,  that  our  best  men  are  not  in 
politics,  and  what  is  a  still  worse  betrayal  of  our  institutions, 
a  large  proportion  of  our  citizens  are  as  perpetually  deprived 
of  representation  as  if  they  had  no  legal  vote  at  all. 

Massachusetts  illustrates  this  in  the  most  glaring  manner 
^for  our  ten  representatives  in  Congress  are  perpetually  Re- 
publican— yet  only  six-tenths  of  our  voters  are  Republicans.* 
Three-tenths  are  Democrats  and  one-tenth  are,  so  to  speak. 
Eccentrics;  that  is,  they  are  the  extremists  and  the  faddists 
who  would  properly  be  represented  by  Wendell  Phillips,  the 
most  golden  and  brilliant  orator  in  the  nation  to-day,  Yet 
Wendell  Phillips  could  neither  be  elected  from  his  own  city 
of  Boston  nor  from  any  other  congressional  district  in  Massa- 
chusetts, because  the  Republicans  hold  the  balance  of  power 
in  all  the  districts,  and  they  don't  want  him.  But  if  our 
Congressmen  were  elected  at  large  from  the  whole  State, 
Phillips  would  go  in  every  time. 

True  that,  being  an  extremist,  he  would  probably  carry  no 
measures  that  he  introduced;  but  he  would  undoubtedly 
modify  many  measures,  and  anyhow  he  ought  to  be  in  Con- 
gress because  one-tenth  of  the  voters  of  his  State  prefer  him 
to  any  other  man,  and  besides,  he  would  add  such  brilliancy 
to  its  debates  that  equally  for  the  glory  and  prestige  of  the 
nation  he  ought  to  be  there. 

Yet  this  splendid  genius  is  perpetually  debarred  from  his 
natural  sphere  in  Washington  because  of  this  most  unfor- 
tunate Election-district  System ! 

Of  course  our  State  Legislatures  suflPer  similarly  from  the 
same  system,  and  so  do  our  town  and  city  councils  from 
our  Ward  System.  The  best  and  ablest  city  voters  usually 
reside  near  each  other  in  one  or  more  wards.  The  other 
wards  contain  comparatively  few  men  fitted  by  training  and 
experience   to   cope   with    the    legislative    and    administrative 

*  In  1905,  nearly  forty  years  after  the  date  of  the  above  conversation, 
though  the  Democrats  of  the  great  State  of  Illinois  numbered  500,000— 
they  had  only  one  representative  in  Congress! 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  103 

problems  of  a  corporation  organized  and  existing  solely  for 
the  public  good;  consequently  our  cities  are  run  by  mere 
ward  politicians  and  the  results  are  precisely  what  might  be 
expected. 

"What  then  is  the  remedy?"  Mr.  Peirce  was  asked. 

The  very  simplest  thing  in  all  the  world :  Simply  abolish 
the  town  and  city  Wards  and  legislative  Election-districts, 
and  let  every  voter  cast  one  vote  (as  he  does  now)  for  his 
town  alderman,  but  let  him  cast  it  for  whatever  candidate 
within  the  town  limits  he  prefers ;  and  similarly  for  his  State 
Representative  and  Senator  and  for  his  Congressional  Repre- 
sentative and  Senator;  let  him  vote  for  any  men  in  the 
State  he  prefers, — one  for  each  office.  Very  fortunately, — 
providentially,  rather — the  Ward  and  District  Systems  are  not 
a  part  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  Sates,  and  therefore 
any  State  can  abrogate  them  for  itself  at  any  time.  As  I 
said  before,  Massachusetts  sends  ten  men  to  Congress.  If 
five  are  elected  each  year,  let  every  voter  in  the  State  have 
one  vote  for  a  representative  in  the  lower  House  and  let  the 
five  men  highest  on  the  list  after  the  votes  are  counted  be  the 
men  elected. 

Of  course,  to  prevent  the  massing  and  thereby  throwing 
away  of  votes  on  extremely  popular  candidates,  some  or- 
ganization would  be  required.  On  election  day,  for  instance, 
voting  after  the  first  two  hours  could  be  suspended  until  the 
vote  as  deposited  could  be  counted  and  telegraphed  over  the 
State,  so  that  voting  for  any  man  who  has  received  his  quota 
could  be  stopped.  If  the  process  took  longer  than  one  day. 
that  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  importance  of  electing 
standard  men — our  best  men — to  our  State  Legislatures  and  to 
Congress.  In  'England  a  Parliamentary  election  may  take 
several  weeks. 

As  for  the  proposed  electoral  reform  of  the  Englishman, 
Thomas  Hare,  which  would  allow  voters  to   vote  each   for 


104  ^^^^    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

first,  second,  third,  and  fourth  choices — so  that  every  man's 
vote  would  be  sure  to  be  counted  for  somebody, — it  is  alto- 
gether too  cumbersome  and  complicated  for  our  huge  and 
heterogeneous  constituencies.  Mr.  Hare  is  so  anxious  to 
have  an  absolutely  perfect  representation — a  representation 
wherein  each  and  every  individual  voter  shall  be  represented 
by  some  one,  that  he  has  fatally  handicapped  his  own  reform. 
His  plan  is  not  practfcal 

But  give  every  man  one  vote  for  the  one  man  he  prefers 
out  of  all  the  candidates  offering  themselves  or  nominated 
by  their  friends,  and  on  the  common  sense  principle  that  no 
man  will  throw  away  his  vote  upon  a  "nobody"  who  can't  be 
elected  when  he  has  the  chance  to  throw  it  for  a  "somebdy" 
who  can, — we  would  soon  find  our  very  best  men  in  our  town 
councils,  in  our  State  Legislatures,  and  in  our  National 
Congress;  and  moreover,  such  men  would  be  as  eager  to 
serve  the  public  in  such  positions  as  now  they  are  determined 
to  keep  out  of  them. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


MEMPHIS. 


It  was  perhaps  ten  years  after  the  uttering  of  the 
foregoing  views  by  Mr.  Peirce  that  the  city  of  Memphis, 
Tenn.,  justified  the  acumen  of  the  youthful  philosopher. 

That  unfortunate  municipality,  depopulated  and  im- 
poverished by  three  successive  yellow  fever  epidemics, — 
due  solely  to  the  shameless  neglect  of  her  continually 
corrupt  and  incompetent  city  council, — was  totally  bank- 
rupt, and  her  public  property  was  about  to  be  sold  by  the 
State  for  her  long  arrears  of  taxes.  "All  that  she  had 
to  show  for  her  many  years  of  existence,"  said  her  local 
historian,  "were  about  eleven  miles  of  rotting  wooden 
pavement  V  From  sewers  to  schools  every  department 
without  exception  was  demoralized  and  disintegrating; 
her  population  had  dwindled  from  45,000  to  15,000,  two- 
thirds  of  whom  were  negroes,  and  her  once  flourishing 
river  commerce  had  practically  disappeared. 

In  this  extremity  her  leading  citizens  united  to  devise 
and  carry  out  some  adequate  plan  of  rescue.  One  of 
them — an  influential  lawyer — declared  and  insisted  that 
the  city's  ruin  had  come  through  incompetent  and  venal 
politicians,  placed  and  kept  in  power  through  the  Ward 
System. 


io6  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"Abolish  the  Wards,  and  elect  a  council  from  the  city 
at  large"  was  his  re-iterated,  persistent  suggestion. 

The  advice  was  heeded,  A  bill  was  piloted  through  the 
Legislature  by  which  a  council  or  board  of  eight  men 
elected  from  the  city  at  large  should  take  absolute  charge 
of  all  its  affairs.  Three  were  to  be  salaried  members  and 
five  to  serve  without  pay;  they  themselves  were  to  elect 
one  of  their  number  chairman,  and  he  was  to  be  the 
acting  mayor. 

Given  thus  the  chance  to  choose  their  rulers  from  the 
whole  community,  so  wisely  did  the  voters  select  the 
eight  all-important  reorganizers,  that  a  very  few  years 
saw  Memphis  a  transformed  and  prosperous  city, — her 
bankruptcy  ably  tided  over,  her  population  and  her  busi- 
ness swiftly  growing  and  expanding,  and  herself  a  mu- 
nicipality as  ambitious  and  progressive  as  previously  she 
had  been  utterly  the  reverse. 

About  twenty-five  years  after  Memphis  had  thus  bril- 
liantly abandoned  the  Ward  System,  two  Texas  cities, 
Galveston  and  Houston,  carried  out  a  similar  revolution. 
The  voters  of  each  elected  from  their  whole  city  limits  a 
small  board  which  was  given  entire  charge  of  all  munici- 
pal affairs.  The  new  departure  was  entitled  "Commis- 
sion Government,"  and  so  successful  and  therefore  popu- 
lar has  it  proved  that  it  is  being  imitated  by  municipalities 
large  and  small  all  over  the  United  States.  Such  chron- 
icles of  the  movement  as  I  have  read,  however,  invari- 
ably give  the  credit  for  the  original  "commission"  ex- 
periments to  Galveston  and  Houston,  though  that  credit 
belongs  absolutely  to  Memphis  of  Tennessee  and  to  her 
statesman-lawyer,    Colonel    Gantt.      Why    thus    far    the 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  107. 

American  public  has  not  been  set  right  in  this  matter, 
and  honor  given  where  honor  is  so  remarkably  due,  re- 
mains to  be  explained. 

Meantime,  if  Hereditary  Americans  do  not  care  to  see 
the  whole  machinery  of  their  government  from  Washing- 
ton down  to  the  rural  village  eventually  in  the  hands  of 
the  foreign-born-and-fathered,  they  had  better  earnestly 
ponder  the  pertinent  questions  once  propounded  by  a  Kan- 
sas newspaper  to  its  readers,  and  take  such  united  state 
and  national  and  civic  action  as  the  present  portentous 
conditions  call  for: 

Representation, 

What  is  it? 

Do  you  know? 

Are  you  sure  you  do? 

Are  you  represented  in  Confess? 

Are  you  represented  in  the  State  legislature? 

That  is,  are  the  men  you  voted  for  in  Congress  and  the 
legislature  respectively? 

If  not,  how,  in  the  name  of  common  sense,  are  you  repre- 
sented? 

You  have  a  right  to  representation  in  the  legislature  and 
Congress,  have  you  not? 

If  you  are  represented  this  time,  have  you  always  been? 

Are  all  your  neighbors  represented? 

If  not,  why  not? 

Have  they  not  as  good  a  right  to  be  represented  as  you 
have? 

Didn't  they  vote? 

Why  wasn't  their  vote  effective? 

Is  not  representation  the  peculiarly  "American"  right? 

Then  what  is  the  difference  between  disfranchising  a  man 


I08  NEW    YORK:   A    SY^MriiuMC   STUDY. 

and  not  having  his  vote  count  towards  the  election  of  some- 
body ? 

Personal,  instead  of  Ward  and  District  Representation,  is 
the  preliminary  reform.  Without  it  you  may  get,  but  can 
never  hold,  any  other. — The  Pittsburg  Kansan,  1893. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


THE  WAY  TO  DO  IT. 


When,  in  1909,  the  Hon.  Raoul  Dandurand,  K.  C, 
speaker  of  the  Canadian  Senate,  was  in  Chicago  to  ad- 
dress the  Association  of  Commerce,  he  said  to  an  inter- 
viewer: 

To  secure  good  city  government  is  impossible  as  long  as  the 
ward  system  is  allowed  to  exist.  The  ward  system  must  go 
if  you  in  America  or  we  in  Canada  are  to  have  good  city 
government.  While  we  permit  a  condition  by  which  the 
corner  liquor-sellers  can  govern  us  simply  by  debauching  the 
little  sections  in  which  they  live,  our  city  government  will  be 
bad.  We  must  make  it  so  that  the  whole  city  can  have  a 
voice  in  selecting  the  men  who  are  to  govern  it.  Then  we 
will  have  men  of  greater  intelligence  and  ability  seeking  the 
honor. 

Mr.  Dandurand  was  prominent  in  the  1909  fight  that 
caused  the  abolition  of  the  ward  system  in  Montreal,  and 
he  favors  the  reform  for  all  the  cities  of  the  Dominion. 

Let  us  now  suppose  a  town-council  of  ten  men  who  serve 
two  years  each,  one-half  of  them  being  elected  each  year ; 
then — 

A 

Allow  any  voter,  either  of  his  own  initiative  or  at  the 


no  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

request  of  his  friends,  to  be  a  candidate  whose  announce- 
ment as  such  appears  and  is  paid  for  at  least  twice  a  week 
during  the  month  before  the  election  in  the  candidates* 
column  of  the  local  paper  or  papers  in  terms  something 
like  the  two  following: — 

John  Wright:  Candidate  for  Town  Council;  Hereditary 
American,  Merchant,  Baptist,  Republican,  will  address  the 
citizens  on  the  town  policies  he  advocates  nightly  until  election. 
Places  and  dates  in  the  daily  papers. 

Or, 

"Thomas  Fitzgerald:  Candidate  for  Town  Council:  Irish- 
American,  Lawyer,  Catholic,  Democrat,  will  address  the 
citizens  on  the  policies  he  advocates  nightly  until  election: 
Places  and  dates  in  the  daily  papers." 


Have  passed  a  law  opening  churches  and  school  halls 
to  the  candidates  and  their  backers  for  speaking  purposes 
on  each  week-day  evening  during  the  month  before  the 
election,  collections  to  be  taken  at  all  meetings  for  the 
heating,  lighting,  and  janitor  services  for  the  buildings. 


In  return  for  the  candidates'  advertisements,  on  the  day 
before  the  election  the  newspapers  by  law  to  print  a 
Candidates'  List  or  "Voters'  Reminder"  containing  the 
names,  race,  religion  and  occupation  of  all  the  town 
council   candidates,   each   under   his   own   party   heading, 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  in 

if  any,  and  if  not,  then  in  the  column  for   "Independents." 

On  election  day  each  voter  to  cast  from  this  "Voters' 
Reminder"  one  ballot  for  one  candidate,  and  one  only. 

E 

The  five  names  heading  the  list  to  be  the  names  elected. 

It  is  evident  that  the  men  who  become  candidates  at  the 
request  of  their  friends  will  have  the  best  chance  for 
election,  but  the  defeated  candidates  will  have  had  the 
satisfaction  of  learning  how  they  stand  with  their  fellow- 
men  and  what  may  be  the  encouragement  for  a  more 
successful  canvass  in  the  future. 

So  simple,  direct,  responsible,  yet  inexpensive  a  method 
of  nomination  and  election  would  so  interest  and  appeal 
to  the  community,  that  its  most  worthy  and  most  able 
citizens  would 'generally  be  found  at  the  head  of  the  list, 
and  the  whole  ten  of  the  council  would  thus  constantly 
represent  its  best  elements. 

Or  take  a  great  city  like  Chicago,  where  are  seventy 
aldermen,  thirty-five  of  whom  are  chosen  every  year  to 
serve  two  years.  Let  the  term  of  office  be  changed  to 
four  years  and  the  number  of  aldermen  to  seventy-two, 
and  let  one-fourth  of  them  be  elected  each  year,  allowing, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  smaller  town,  any  name  to  be  voted 
for  which  has  been  advertised  as  a  candidate  in  the  daily 
press  twice  weekly  for  one  month.     On  election  day  let 


112  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


every  voter  cast  one^votc  for  one  name,  and  one  only, 
from  the  "Voters'  Reminder,"  and  let  the  eighteen  who 
stand  highest  on  the  list  be  the  men  elected. 

What  w^ould  happen? 

The  different  foreign  contingents  of  the  Chicago  voters, 
— Irish,  German,  Jewish,  Italian,  Scandinavian,  Polish, 
Hungarian,  Negro,  and  so  on, — would  put  themselves 
behind  their  best  and  strongest  men;  the  Hereditary 
Americans  would  put  forward  their  best  and  strongest 
men,  and  therefore  the  Men  of  Power  and  Prestige  of  all 
the  races  would  be  elected,  and  the  Chicago  Board  of 
Aldermen  would  truly  represent  the  worthiest  manhood 
of  any  race  numerous  enough  to  elect  one,  at  least,  of 
the  eighteen  men  found  at  the  head  of  the  list.  In  other 
words,  each  alien  race  would  have  its  due  proportion  of 
the  councilmen,  and  the  Chicago  Council  would  never 
again  be,  as  so  often  in  the.  past,  overwhelmingly  of 
the  most  insignificant  and  often  corrupt  foreign-born 
and  foreign-fathered  citizens, — with  the  Hereditary  Amer- 
icans left  almost  entirely  out ! 

Apply  the  same  principle  to  the  election  of  men  to  the 
State  Legislatures  and  to  Congress.  Let  the  area  of  each 
State  be  free  to  all  the  voters  of  each  State,  thus  enabling 
any  one  of  them  to  say  to  the  State:  "Such  and  such 
are  my  political,  and  such  my  humanitarian  principles; 
such  my  specially  American  and  such  my  specially  foreign 
policies,  and  such  and  such  are  my  personal  records  as 
a  citizen  and  as  a  voter.  If  my  personal  record  commands 
your  confidence  and  my  political  principles  echo  your  con- 
victions, and  enough  of  my  fellow-citizens  will  vote  for 
me  to  come  in  as  one  of  the  delegation  to  be  sent  this 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  113 

year  to  the  Legislature  (or  to  Congress),  then  these 
principles  and  the  measures  needed  for  carrying  them 
out  will  have  in  myself  an  advocate  in  the  State  Legis- 
lature (or  in  Congress)." 

Can  there  be  a  doubt  that  the  best  men  of  every  nation- 
ality in  every  State  would  be  ambitious — nay,  eager — to 
serve  their  State  in  her  Legislature  and  their  country  in 
Congress;  that  often  they  would  do  their  manhood-utmost 
to  attain  the  honor,  and  that  in  ten  years  our  Legislatures 
and  our  Congress,  like  the  English  House  of  Commons, 
would  be  assemblages  of  all  that  is  highest  and  broadest 
and  greatest  in  the  American  people? 

Our  Catholic  citizens — the  men  whose  souls  and  minds 
and  hearts  are  guided  and  governed  by  celibate  bishops 
and  celibate  priests — are  here  to  ^^03;.  By  American  law 
they  are  entitled  to  political  representation  and  political 
office  and  therefore  political  power  on  the  same  terms  as 
are  the  hereditary  non-Catholics.  But  it  is  for  the  non- 
Catholics,  both  native  and  foreign,  who  together  still 
sextuple  the  Catholics — to  decide  and  decide  speedily, 
whether  our  Catholic  voters  shall  rule  our  non-Catholic 
men,  women,  and  children  as  now  everywhere  they  are 
ruling, — whether  the  "bishop"  civilization  of  Italy,  Ireland, 
and  the  Spanish  Americas  shall  overwhelm  and  sub- 
merge, as  it  is  deeply  hoping  and  sleeplessly  working  to 
submerge — the  "Bible"  civilization  of  our  British  and 
Dutch  and  Scandinavian  Founders  and  Forefathers. 

When  Lafayette,  forty  years  after  the  surrender  of 
Yorktown  in  w^hich  he  had  borne  so  vital  and  brilliant  a 
part,  revisited  the  young  Republic  that  his  free  and 
/aliant  spirit  had  helped  to  create,  he  was  so  impressed 


114  ^EW   YORK:  A   SY)\1PH0NIC  STUDY. 

with  its  phenomenal  growth  and  progress  and  with  its 
almost  divine  beneficence  toward  its  citizens,  that  he 
declared  the  United  States  to  be  impregnable  against  every 
subversive  influence  save  that  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
"If,"  said  he,  and  he  reiterated  it  to  more  than  one  Ameri- 
can, "the  liberties  of  the  American  people  are  ever  de- 
stroyed, they  will  fall  by  the  hands  of  the  Romish  clergy." 
Yet  the  Catholics  of  that  day  in  this  country  were  so 
few,  so  ignorant,  and  so  poor  that  the  then  Catholicsm 
on  the  American  horizon  was  but  as  the  scriptural  "little 
cloud  out  of  the  sea,  like  a  man's  hand."  (I  Kings,  18. 
44). 

Well  did  the  experienced  Lafayette — born,  baptized,  and 
brought  up  in  a  Catholic  country — realize  the  quenchless 
greed  for  dominion  and  power  that  does  and  must  burn 
in  the  breast  of  a  celibate  priesthood,  because,  cut  off  as 
are  its  poor  unfortunates  from  all  human  ties  and  hopes, 
the  one  thing  it  has  to  live  for  is  the  triumph  of  its 
great  priestly  machine: — well,  I  say,  did  this  far-seeing 
Frenchman  estimate  the  sleepless  and  mighty  force  that 
from  the  nature  of  things  would  plot  against  this  fair 
and  mighty  land,  and  fully  has  his  foreboding  been  justi- 
fied. For  the  once  "little  cloud"  has  now  overspread  the 
whole  American  sky,  and  in  three  leading  States — New 
York,  Illinois,  and  Massachusetts— and  also  in  their  great- 
est cities— New  York,  Chicago,  and  Boston,  together  with 
many  of  their  minor  ones,  the  Irish  Catholics  are  in  the 
governmental  saddle,  and  American  Protestantism  is 
'down  and  out,"  perhaps  forever! 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

A  NEW  PATRIOTIC  ASSOCIATION. 

If  as  the  result  of  the  foregoing  pages  any  non- 
Catholic  hereditary  American  wishes  to  aid  in  counter- 
acting "what's  wrong"  with  the  city  of  New  York,  and 
equally  with  the  United  States  as  following  the  lead  of 
New  York, — let  him  urge  his  family  and  friends  and 
neighbors  to  join  in  forming  a  local  lodge  or  chapter  of  a 
"National  Association  of  Heredivary  Americans"  of 
which  the  following  shall  be  the  openly  proclaimed 

Objects. 

I.  The  preservation,  perfecting,  and  promotion  of 
American  Institutions  as  founded  by  our  Protestant  fore- 
fathers. 

II.  The  uplifting,  maintaining  and  enlarging  of  Ameri- 
can Ideals. 

III.  The  cherishing  and  continuing  of  American  Cus- 
toms and  Usages,  save  where  foreign  customs  and  usages 
are  undeniably  better  or  more  beautiful. 

IV.  The  restoring  to  and  retaining  in  Hereditary 
American  hands  of  Local,  State  and  National  Government 
everywhere  throughout  the  Union. 


ii6  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


Membership. 

American  citizens  of  worthy  life  and  of  either  sex,  one 
or  more  of  whose  ancestors  voted  for  one  or  more  of  the 
first  nine  presidents — Washington,  Adams,  Jefferson, 
Madison,  Quincy  Adams,  Jackson,  Van  Buren,  Harrison — 
are  eligible  to  membership  in  this  Association. 

Adopted  Membership. 

Foreign-born-or-fathered  citizens  who  believe  in  and 
who  advocate  the  Single  Standard  of  Morals,  Monogamic 
Marriage,  the  Bible  in  the  Public  Schools,  Co-education 
in  the  Public  Schools  and  in  Colleges  and  Universities, 
and  Martial  Law  for  Capital  Sex  Offenses,  shall  also  be 
eligible  to  membership  in  this  Association, — because  these 
five  principles  are  the  deep  foundation  of  the  United 
States  and  the  latent  dynamic  of  their  power,  and  who- 
ever holds  to  them  is  ipso  facto  a  United  States  Man, 
or  "Bible"  American,  and  to  be  welcomed  and  trusted 
and  elected  as  such. 

Membership  Dues. 

The  national  membership  dues  in  this  Association  to 
be  one  dollar  on  entering  and  one  dollar  on  every  January 
1st  thereafter.  Local  chapters  to  decide  upon  their  own 
additional  dues. 

How  Organized. 

The    local    chapters    of    the    National    Association    of 


iXEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  117 

Hereditary  Americans  to  organize  themselves  in  two  divi- 
sions,— the  Division  of  the  Hereditary  Sons  and  the 
Division  of  the  Hereditary  Daughters,  but  the  closing 
meeting  of  each  quarter  to  be  a  joint  meeting  of  the  two 
divisions;  the  Sons  to  be  seated  in  one-half  of  the 
assembly-room  and  the  Daughters  in  the  other ;  the  officers 
of  both  divisions  to  be  upon  the  platform;  the  President 
of  the  Sons  to  preside  when  the  reports  of  past  and 
plans  of  future  work  are  presented  by  the  Sons,  and  the 
President  of  the  Daughters  to  preside  when  similar  reports 
and  plans  are  presented  by  the  Daughters. 

Titles  of  Presiding  Officers. 

The  titles  of  its  presiding  officers  to  be  those  asso- 
ciated with  Republican  Institutions,  as  "President,"  or 
"Chairman,"  never  "Regent." 


A  NEW  POLITICAL  PARTY. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 


A    NEW    POLITICAL    PARTY. 


In  order  to  achieve  the  objects  of  the  Hereditary  Ameri- 
can Association,  and  especially  the  fourth,  which  is,  to 
get  back  the  government  of  the  American  People  into 
American  as  distinguished  from  Foreign  hands,  it  will 
be  necessary  for  its  members  to  organize  a  new  political 
party  with  some,  at  least,  of  the  planks  and  policies  in  its 
platform  hereinafter  suggested  both  as  the  appeal  and  the 
excuse  for  its  existence.     Its  title  should  be: 

'"the   true    AMERICAN    PARTY,    OR   PARTY   OF   JUSTICE/' 

because  in  every  outlook  and  aim  of  the  American  People 
it  will  uphold  the  Sisterhood  of  Woman  equally  with 
and  alongside  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man. 

But  in  the  following  pages  it  will  appear  simply  as  the 
"New  Party.'' 

Leadership  of  the  New  Party. 


The  state  membership  of  the  New  Party  will  elect 
in  every  county  of  the  State  a  county  standing  commit- 
tee to  serve  two  years,  one-half  to  be  elected  in  alternate 
years;  and  the  chairman  of  these  county  committees  shall 
constitute  the  state  standing  committee. 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  119 


The  state  membership  of  the  New  Party  will  elect  in 
every  State  a  president  as  state  leader  and  chairman 
ex  officio  of  its  standing  committee,  but  the  vice-president 
and  other  officers  of  such  committee  shall  be  elected  by 
the  committee. 


All  the  state  presidents  shall  constitute  the  National 
Standing  Committee  of  the  New  Party  and  shall  elect  one 
of  their  number  as  Chairman  and  ex  officio  President  of 
the  Party. 


The  state  presidents  and  the  national  president  of  the 
New  Party  shall  alike  be  elected  for  four  years, — their 
terms  to  correspond  with  the  terms  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States.  They  may  be  elected  for  a  second  term, 
but  no  more. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


PROPOSED  PLANKS  OF  THE  NEW  PARTY. 


For  Restoring  the  Bible  to  the  Public  Schools. 


Since  the  greatest  possible  wrong  to  the  child  and 
equally  to  the  country  of  which  he  is  to  become  a  citizen, 
is  not  to  teach  him  to  know  right  from  wrong,  and  as  the 
Bible  is  the  Book  of  Right  and  Wrong  which  transcends 
all  others  and  is  the  basis  upon  which  all  the  modern  laws 
and  morals  of  Europe  and  the  two  Americas  have  been 
builded  up,  the  first  and  paramount  duty  of  the  Hereditary 
American  is  to  restore  this  Bible  to  the  Public  Schools 
and  to  that  end  to  pass  the  following  amendment  to  the 
First  Amendment  of  the  Federal  Constitution. 

This  amendment  begins :  "Congress  shall  make  no  law 
respecting  an  establishment  of  religion.     .     .     /' 

The  New  Party  will  seek  to  amend  this  amendment  by 
adding  at  its  end:  ''but  nothing  in  this  amendment  shall 
be  construed  as  against  the  reading  and  memorising  of 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  I2I 

B 

The  New  Party  will  introduce  into  the  Legislatures  of 
all  the  States  and  Territories  a  law  providing  that,  begin- 
ning with  Genesis  and  ending  with  Revelation,  two  chap- 
ters of  the  Bible  in  regular  course  shall  be  daily  read 
aloud  in  unison  by  the  pupils  (but  without  note  or  com- 
ment by  their  teachers)  as  the  opening  exercise  of  every 
day  in  the  grammar  and  high  school  grades;  the  New 
Testament  to  be  read  through  twice  to  the  Old  Testament 
once,  and  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  the  nineteenth 
chapter  of  Leviticus,  the  first,  the  nineteenth,  and  the 
hundred  and  thirty-ninth  Psalms,  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First  Corinthians,  to- 
gether with  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Ten  Commandments 
and  the  Beatitudes  (and  where  possible,  "My  Duty  toward 
God"  and  "My  Duty  toward  my  Neighbor"  from  the 
Common  Prayer  Book)  to  be  gradually  memorized  by  all 
pupils  between  the  ages  of  eight  and  fourteen,  and  there- 
after to  be  either  read  or  recited  in  unison  several  times 
a  year  by  the  same  pupils  up  to  the  date  of  grammar 
school  graduation;  the  verse-divisions  of  the  Bible  both 
in  reading  and  memorizing,  to  be  retained,  and  those  por- 
tions of  it  only  to  be  excluded  as  are  uninteresting  or 
unintelligible  to  children — such  being  most  of  the  Prophets 
and  of  the  Book  of  Job,  the  Song  of  Solomon,  the  Temple 
ceremonials,  the  census  lists  and  the  genealogies;  but 
these  exclusions  to  be  determined  by  a  national  com- 
mittee of  three  persons  respectively  from  every  religious 
denomination  that  acknowledges  the  Bible  as  its  Source 
and  Guide  and  enrolls  half  a  million  communicants:  the 


122  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

three  persons  from  such  denomination  not  to  be  related, 
and  to  be  chosen  by  the  ministers  of  the  same,  and  one 
of  the  three  to  be  a  Bible-trained  and  Bible-believing 
woman. 


As  the  most  important  moral  study  for  the  American 
child  after  the  Bible,  the  New  Party  will  demand  the 
introduction  of  Universal  History  into  all  grammar  and 
high  schools.  Like  the  Bible,  this  branch  should  be 
taught  by  reading  aloud  chiefly.  The  United  States  Com- 
missioner of  Education  should  interest  able  and  judicious 
women  writers  to  prepare  a  series  of  History  Readers 
which  could  be  recommended  for  adoption  by  the  forty- 
eight  States.  Relating  in  simple  language  suitable  for 
the  very  young  the  stories  of  the  early  simple  empires 
and  their  rulers,  the  series,  always  in  easy  narrative 
form,  should  come  down  through  the  ages  to  the  more 
complicated  governments  as  moulded  and  modified  by  the 
ambitious  personalities  of  the  few  or  by  the  religious  and 
political  agitations  of  the  many.  Thus  the  high-school 
graduate,  simply  from  such  reading-lessons  throughout 
his  school-life,  would  leave  that  life  with  a  bird's-eye 
view  of  the  history  of  the  whole  human  race  stamped 
upon  his  memory  where  without  them  would  be  but  a 
deplorable  and  inexecusable  blank! 

D 

Because  the  Public  Schools  of  the  United  States  will 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  123 

never  be  what  they  ought  to  become  until  the  School- 
Boards  governing  them  are  composed  of  the  most  respon- 
sible citizens  of  their  respective  communities — the  New 
Party  will  urge  that  school-boards  everywhere  shall  num- 
ber not  less  than  three  well-educated  men  and  three  well- 
educated  women  elected  by  the  registered  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  community,  one  of  each  sex  to  be  chosen 
each  year  to  serve  three  years;  in  larger  communities  the 
number  of  these  school-committee  men  and  women  to  be 
not  less  than  nine  of  each  sex,  one-third  to  be  chosen 
each  year  to  serve  three  years. 

Under  school-boards  so  constituted,  the  principal  of  each 
school  should  be  made,  as  now  in  Wisconsin,  the  social  and 
civic  secretary  of  the  school  neighborhood,  and  the  school 
building  and  grounds,  when  not  occupied  by  the  school 
pupils,  held  available  for  social  and  political  neighborhood 
meetings  and  for  out-door  games  and  pleasures. 


II. 


Play-grounds  for  the  Public  Schools. 


Since  the  population  of  the  United  States  is  rapidly 
increasing  and  the  price  of  land  rapidly  going  up,  no 
time  will  be  lost  by  the  New  Party  in  trying  to  create 
a  nation-wide  movement  for  a  play-and-garden-ground 
around  or  adjoining  every  public  school  in  the  United 
States;  this  ground  to  be  ample  enough  for  the  national 


J 24  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

game  of  baseball  to  be  played  therein,  and  for  a  row  of 
shade-trees  round  the  inside  of  the  school  fence  and 
beneath  them  two  rows  of  seats  wherefrom  the  game  may 
be  watched  by  spectators ;  these  seats  to  be  separated  from 
the  "diamond"  by  a  broad  walk,  and  the  back  row  to  be 
higher  than  the  front  one,  circus-fashion. 

To  purchase  such  play-grounds,  every  school-board 
should  be  empowered  to  borrow  money  at  four  per  cent, 
for  which  it  should  pay  annual  interest  at  five  per  cent,* 
the  extra  one  per  cent  going  toward  payment  of  the  prin- 
cipal until  in  the  course  of  years  the  whole  price  would  be 
liquidated.  Whether  this  required  thirty  years,  fifty  years 
or  one  hundred  years,  the  advantage  to  the  children  and 
youth  of  every  neighborhood  of  ample  and  tree-shaded 
grounds  around  every  school-house  would  be  so  trans- 
cendant  that  the  cost  should  not  for  one  moment  be  con- 
sidered. Such  play-grounds  for  our  children  and  young 
men  have  simply  got  to  he  had  and  according  to  the 
size  of  the  school  they  must  be  from  one  to  four  acres 
in  extent.  Around  every  school-building  should  also  be 
a  flower-bed  three  feet  wide  which  throughout  the  flower- 
season  the  boys  and  girls  themselves  should  keep  in 
blossom.  One  such  border  the  writer  once  saw  around  a 
big  school-building  in  New  York,  and  how  joyous  and 
beautiful  it  was! 


*  This  plan  of  borrowing  at  4  per  cent,  and  paying  5  per  cent,  in- 
terest, was  proposed  by  the  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt  and  was  adopted  by 
the  city  of  New  York  in  order  to  obtain  the  $30,000,000  needed  for  the 
building  of  New  York's  first  underground  railroad.  Mr.  Hewitt's  argu- 
ment was  that  by  this  method  the  city  would  own  the  underground 
free  of  debt,  in  thirty  years. 


NEH'    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  125 

III. 

For  Co-Education. 

The  New  Party  will  endeavor  to  make  the  co-education 
of  boys  and  girls  compulsory  in  all  schools,  colleges,  and 
universities  that  are  maintained  or  aided  by  the  States 
or  by  the  Nation;  in  school-hours  the  boys  to  be  seated 
with  boys  and  the  girls  with  girls,  but  both  to  recite 
in  the  same  classes;  in  play-hours  they  will  practically 
never  be  together,  so  that  uneasiness  on  that  score  may 
be  dismissed, — it  being  the  universal  instinct  and  custom 
of  boys  out  of  school  to  companion  with  boys  only. 

IV. 

For  the  Abolition  of  Wards  and  Election  Districts. 

As  the  Foundation  Political  Measure  for  the  reform  of 
American  town,  state  and  national  government,  the  New 
Party  will  strenuously  endeavor  to  bring  about  legislation 
abolishing  in  all  towns  and  cities  the  Ward  System  for 
choosing  town  and  city  councilmen,  and  in  all  States  the 
Election-district  System  for  choosing  members  and  sena- 
tors to  the  State  Legislatures  and  to  Congress;  substitut- 
ing for  the  Ward  System  the  nominations  and  election 
at  large  from  each  community  of  all  town  and  city  coun- 
cilmen, and  for  the  Election-district  System  the  election 
of  State  and  of  Congressional  legislators  at  large  from 
the  whole  State, — each  voter  in  town  and  city  elections  to 
have  one  vote  for  one  councilman  and  no  more,  and  each 


126  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

voter  in  legislative  elections  to  have  one  vote  for  one 
member  of  the  lower  House  and  one  for  the  upper  or 
Senate,  and  no  more,  whether  these  be  for  the  State  Legis- 
latures or  for  the  Federal  Congress.  In  other  words, 
there  shall  be  no  "first,"  "second,"  and  "third"  choices, 
but  each  voter  shall  vote  once,  for  one  Senator  in  the 
upper  and  once  for  one  Representative  in  the  lower  House 
respectively  of  his  State  and  of  Congress,  and  the  names 
found  highest  on  the  list  shall  be  the  names  elected. 

This  reform,  and  this  reform  only,  will  place  the  law- 
making of  the  nation  and  equally  of  its  States  and 
municipalities  in  the  hands  of  the  Hereditary  Americans 
where  it  legitimately  belongs,  because  their  proportion  is 
two-thirds  of  the  population;  and  at  the  same  time  it 
will  give  representation  to  the  different  foreign  elements 
in  proportion  also  to  their  numbers, — which  is  the  very 
utmost  the  foreigner  can  expect  to  have,  or  ought  to 
have,  and  far  more  than  any  other  nation  has  ever 
granted  to  the  immigrant  or  the  ahen. 

V. 

Of  Nominations  and  Elections. 

To  get  the  best  men  into  Town  Councils  and  into  State 
and  National  Legislatures,  the  best  men  must  be  nomi- 
nated. "Free"  instead  of  "party"  nominations  were  first 
suggested  many  years  ago  by  the  late  Josiah  P.  Quincy, 
. Srd,  of  Boston;  and  if  the  suggestion  were  adopted  it 
would  perhaps  become,  and  surely  it  ought  to  become,  the 
pride  and  the  delight  of  the  young  men — the  men  between 


i\EW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  127 

18  and  35 — to  secure  the  nomination  oi  the  best  men  and 
to  work  for  their  election.  At  the  present  time  our  young 
men  as  factors  in  American  politics  are  unpatriotic  and 
therefore  unmanly  ciphers.  They  don't  know  and  don't 
care  who  is  nominated  and  very  often  they  don't  vote. 

The  New  Party  will  therefore  seek  to  obtain  laws  estab- 
lishing and  compelling  Free  Nominations  either  by  the 
method  suggested  (page  110),  or  by  some  better  one  de- 
vised by  the  party  organizers.  Whether  three,  or  five, 
or  ten,  or  twenty  candidates  are  to  be  chosen  to  a  town 
or  city  council,  or  to  a  State  legislature,  each  voter  must 
choose  from  the  Candidates'  List  or  "Voters'  Reminder" 
(printed  according  to  law  in  all  the  papers  the  day  before 
the  election)  the  one  man  he  wishes  for  his  personal 
representative,  and  that  name,  after  entering  the  voting 
booth,  he  must  himself  write  upon  the  ballot  to  which  he 
signs  his  own  name.  Then  the  three,  or  five,  or  ten,  or 
twenty  candidates  that  stand  highest  on  the  list  after 
the  votes  are  counted  will  be  the  men  elected.  The 
popular  men  will  of  course  always  be  found  at  the  top 
of  the  list,  and  the  able  man,  who  is,  perhaps,  not  so 
popular,  near  the  bottom,  but  the  able  man  will  be  in, 
and  that  is  the  vital  political  requisite. 

VI. 

Of  Votes  for  Women. 

The  New  Party  will  advocate  and  urge  the  Representa- 
tion of  Women  hy  Women  through  the  same  election-at- 
large  method  that  it  will  urge  for  the  representation  of 


128  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

men  by  men.  If  they  prefer,  let  them  sit  in  the  same 
council  and  legislative  chambers  as  the  men  members 
but  on  opposite  sides  of  the  House — the  object  being  to 
mass  men  with  men  and  women  with  women  in  order 
thereby  to  bring  out  Quintessential  Manhood  on  the  one 
side  and  Quintessential  Womanhood  on  the  other. 

''Representation"  is  what  the  entire  American  system 
stands  for, — Human  Representation, — and  it  is  all  it 
stands  for.  Men  can  not  represent  women  per  se  nor 
women  represent  men  per  se.  Therefore,  men  alone  should 
elect  men  to  represent  Manhood  in  all  American  legislative 
bodies  and  councils,  and  women  alone  should  elect  women 
to  represent  Womanhood  in  the  same  bodies.  Our  State 
and  Congressional  Legislatures  should  no  longer  consist 
of  two  houses  of  men  only.  The  Lawmaking  Power  of 
every  State  and  of  the  Nation  should  be  either  a  House 
of  Men  and  a  House  of  Women,  or  its  two  houses  should 
each  be  composed  half  of  men  and  half  of  women, — the 
Lower  House  of  men  and  women  Representatives  elected 
at  large  for  two  years;  the  Upper  House  of  men  and 
women  Senators  elected  at  large  for  six  years ;  nor  should 
any  measure  become  a  law  until  it  has  been  passed  by  a 
majority  of  both  sexes,  voting  separately. 


VII. 


To  Limit  Foreigners  as  Voters  and  Off  ice-Holders. 

The  New  Party  will  endeavor  to  pass  laws  forbidding 
the  naturalization  of  foreigners  until  they  have  been  in 
the  country  twenty-one  years  and  also  have  learned  to 


NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  129 

speak,  read,  and  write  the  English  language.  Also  will 
the  party  strenuously  oppose  the  conferring  of  public 
offices  and  positions  that  involve  moral  influence  and 
responsibility, — especially  those  of  policemen  and  police 
inspectors  and  of  public-school  teachers  and  public-school 
officials  and  committee  men, — on  any  foreign-born  citizen 
whatsoever.  -Hereditary  Americans  must  in  future  every- 
where constitute  the  major  element  in  the  American  police, 
and  they  must  also  everywhere  do  the  greater  share  of 
the  public-school  teaching  and  must  inspire  and  control 
the  whole  system  of  public  education.  When  the  late 
Abram  S.  Hewitt — for  years  acknowledged  one  of  New 
York's  greatest  men  if  not  her  very  greatest — was  mayor 
of  that  city  (1887-89)  he  said  on  the  occasion  of  his 
putting  a  stop  to  the  display  of  the  Irish  flag  from  the 
city  hall,  that  the  foreign-born  ought  not  to  be  allowed 
either  to  vote  or  to  hold  office.  Mayor  Hewitt  was  him- 
self the  son  of  an  English  immigrant,  and  in  his  great 
iron-works  in  New  Jersey  was  a  large  employer  of  foreign 
labor.  He  never  had  a  strike  among  his  work-people, 
which  showed  that  he  both  understood  and  sympathized 
with  them.  Yet  his  lifelong  experience  had  led  him  to 
the  above  non-popular,  but  too  well  justified  conviction. 


VIII. 


For  Surcease  of  Immigration  and  Minimizing  of  its  Evils, 


The  abnormal  and  unhealthy  growth  of  the  cities  of 


V 

130  NEIV   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

the  United  States  and  the  taking  possession  of  most  of 
their  lesser  avenues  of  livelihood  and  of  their  political 
offices  by  the  foreign-born-ahd-fathered,  together  with  the 
immense,  disgraceful,  and  ever-increasing  number  of  the 
unemployed,  so  clearly  demonstrate  the  truth  that  the 
limit  for  the  American  assimilation  of  foreigners  is  over- 
passed, that  the  New  Party  will  urge  compul-sory  decrease 
of  immigration  by  one  hundred  thousand  souls  annually 
until  zero  is  reached,  after  which  no  manual  laborers  of 
any  kind,  from  any  quarter,  or  for  any  purpose,  to  be 
admitted  for  twenty-five  years.  The  Party  will  further 
urge  and  demand  that  no  unmarried  male  laborers  of  any 
nationality  whatsoever  be  hereafter  admitted  into  the 
country — the  resulting  demoralization  from  such  male 
celibate  immigration  being  too  deep  and  dreadful  in  both 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  coast  cities  to  be  longer 
tolerated. 


The  Party  will  further  urge  and  demand  that  all  girls 
between  sixteen  and  twenty-one  who  are  unskilled  workers 
and  who  are  not  required  at  home  to  assist  their  mothers 
m  home  child-minding,  cooking,  cleaning,  laundering,  and 
mending,  shall  go  into  service  in  responsible  families  until 
they  are  of  age,  and  this  for  two  reasons;  first,  that 
they  may  learn  the  language  and  become  familiar  with 
"home"  Americans  and  Americanism;  and  second,  that 
they  may  be  trained  in  the  domestic  industries,  habits 
and  ideals  that  will  fit  them,  as  the  comins:  wives  and 
mothers  of  naturalized  foreigners,  to  carry  0:1  instead  of 


XEIV    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  131 

dragging  down  American  civilization.  If  Italians,  Poles, 
Hungarians,  Jews,  Greeks,  and  all  the  rest  of  them  will 
come  over  here,  it  must  be  at  the  price  of  accepting  and 
conforming  to  American  ways  and  manners  and  usages. 
''Little  Italys"  and  "little  Ghettos"  are  out  of  place  in" 
big  North  America! 


The  New  Party  will  further  urge  and  demand  the 
exclusion  of  all  Asiatics  whatsoever  save  Asiatic-born 
Jews  and  Armenians  from  United  States  soil,  citizenship, 
real  estate  ownership,  and  intermarriage, — the  sole  and 
all-sufficient  and  imperative  reason  being  their  attitude 
toward  and  treatment  of  their  womankind  as  an  inferior 
caste,  and  their  unblushing  polygamy,  profligacy,  and 
sodomy.  Until  the  Asiatic  races  and  governments  for- 
swear and  abandon  these  wickednesses,  adopt  monogamy 
and  the  three  R's,  and  accept  the  New  Testament  standards 
of  Right  and  Wrong  that  we  write  into  our  own  laws  and 
impose  upon  our  own  sons  and  daughters,  Asiatics  must 
be  kept  out.  Better  our  lands  lie  fallow,  better  our  mines 
go  unworked,  than  expose  ourselves  to  the  contamination 
of  pagans  settling  among  us  and  disseminating  the  loath- 
some practices  which  have  reduced  themselves  to  the 
moral  lepers  and  intellectual  echoes  and  effetes  that  they 
so  often  are.  Besides,  what  with  Hawaiian,  Phillipine, 
and  Negro  licentiousness,  have  we  not  already  more 
paganism  growing  up  with  our  Christian  ideals  and  insti- 
tutions than  we  are  eliminating? 

In  midsummer  of  1901,  the  New  York  Sun  gave  figures 


132  NEIV   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

from  the  national  census  of  the  previous  year,  which  said 
that  in  1880  the  illegitimate  negro  births  in  the  South 
were  53  per  cent,  and  that  in  1900  they  had  risen  to  68 
per  cent !  Was  anything  done  or  said  in  the  United 
States  about  this  heinous  condition?  Think  of  it!  Two- 
thirds  of  an  alien  race  which  numbers  among  us  many 
millions — born  out  of  wedlock;  yet  the  Negro,  like  the 
Japanese,  complains  and  protests  because  he  is  not  re- 
spected and  not  wanted ! 

IX. 

Of  M  or  monism. 

The  New  Party  will  uncompromisingly  demand  the 
prosecution  of  Mormon  polygamists  to  the  utmost  rigor 
of  the  law,  nr  i  will  advocate  an  amendment  to  the  Con- 
stitution forbidding  polygamy  throughout  all  territory 
over  which  floats  the  United  States  flag.  The  Party  will 
insist  that  the  Morman  so-called  "plural  wives"  be  called 
what  they  legally  are,  namely,  "mistresses,"  and  also  their 
children  what  they  legally  are.  namely  "bastards"  without 
rights  of  inheritance  as  against  the  lawful  children. 
On  imprisoning  the  polygamist,  let  his  property  be  divided 
into  as  many  shares  plus  one  as  he  has  so-called  wives. 
two  of  the  shares  to  be  given  to  the  legal  wife  and  her 
children,  and  one  to  each  mistress  and  her  children.  If 
this  provision  be  not  sufficient  to  care  for  the  children, 
let  them  be  trained  as  wards  of  the  United  States  until 
able  to  be  self-supporting.  In  no  other  way  than  this 
will   Mormon  polygamy  ever  be   extirpated;   the   reason 


NEW    YORK:   A    SYMPHOXJC  STUDY.  T.^3 

being  that  too  many  unlettered  women  wish  above  every- 
thing to  be  ''wives"  and  to  be  called  "Mrs."  Tearing  away 
the  lie  from  their  real  status  and  that  of  their  children 
will  alone  root  out  polygamous  Mormonism  from  the 
United  States. 


Of  Personal  Inviolability. 

The  New  Party  will  seek  to  introduce  into  Congress  and 
all  the  State  Legislatures  bills  providing  that  in  all  lands 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  United  States,  in  every  case 
of  atrocious  assault  upon  woman  or  girl  by  man  or  youth 
over  sixteen,  the  nine  matrons  who  are  the  victim's  nearest 
neighbors,  together  with  three  others  who  are  wives  of  the 
nearest  doctor,  the  nearest  lawyer,  and  the  nearest  church 
pastor  respectively,  shall  be  summoned  as  a  jury  to  hear 
the  story  of  the  victim  and  to  confront  her  with  her 
assailant.  The  latter  being  identified,  he  shall  at  once 
be  delivered  to  the  nearest  resident  captain  of  militia, 
who,  with  a  detail  of  twelve  of  his  company,  shall  lead 
him  to  the  nearest  convenient  spot  and  there  hang  him  by 
the  neck  until  he  is  dead. 

The  New  Party  will  furthermore  demand  the  same 
court-martial  retribution  against  the  makers  and  vendors 
of  obscene  pictures  and  literature,  also  against  panders 
and  procuresses,  and  against  men  convicted  of  depraving 
boys. 


134  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 


XI. 


Of  the  Extirpation  of  Vice, 

With  very  few  exceptions,  the  governments  and  also 
the  political  parties  of  the  world  content  themselves  with 
laws  for  the  protection  of  life  and  property,  while  the 
laws  for  the  protection  of  feminine  honor — every  woman's 
vital  jewel  and  every  nation's  foundation  rock — are  as  a 
rule  both  inadequate  and  disregarded.  Men  everywhere 
are  not  ashamed  to  maintain  an  enormous  difference 
between  vice  and  crime, — "crime"  being  the  wrongs 
against  one  another  which,  if  their  perpetrator  is  caught 
and  convicted,  will  land  him  in  prison  or  even  conduct 
him  to  execution,  and  "vice"  being  the  fearful  offenses 
against  womanhood  which  almost  any  man  may,  and 
which  many  men  do,  commit  with  impunity. 

As  the  "Party  of  Justice,"  therefore,  the  New  Party 
should  decide  to  legislate  for  "vice"  precisely  as  though 
it  were  the  "crime"  which  in  fact  it  is,  and  since  delight 
in  the  nude  for  the  nude's  sake  and  delight  in  drinking 
for  drink's  sake  are  the  chief  pre-disposers  and  tempters 
to  vice,  the  New  Party  should  demand  stern  deterrent 
penalties  for  immodest  and  suggestive  woman's  dress — 
whether  in  the  ball-room,  on  the  stage,  or  on  the  street, 
and  for  no  dress  on  the  stage,  in  the  studio,  and  at  the 
banquet.  The  near-nude  chorus-girl,  with  her  wanton 
plot,  dialogue,  and  dance;  the  nude  artist's  model  (who 
also  is  so  often  a  nude  guest  at  masculine  suppers),  the 
Isadora  Duncans,  Ruth  St.  Denises,  Gertrude  Hoffman?, 
and  Annette.  Kellermans  who  now  are  educating  coun^ 


NEIV   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  135 

less  audiences  in  non-modesty,  must  disappear  from  the 
United  States  to  return  no  more;  while  as  for  the  saloon 
and  the  resort, — those  factories  of  hell  whence  come  our 
male  wrecks  and  derelicts  with  their  broken-hearted 
wives,  their  broken  up  homes,  and  their  devitalized, 
inferior  children, — they  must  be  wiped  out  as  implacably 
as  Southern  Slavery  was  wiped  out. 

Listen  to  the  wail  of  Kipling's  "legions  of  the  lost 
ones — the  cohorts  of  the  damned,"  whose  "pride  it  is  to 
know  no  spur  of  pride" ; 

"We  are  done  with  Hope  and  Honor,  we  are  lost  to  Love 
and  Truth, 

We  are  dropping  down  the  ladder  rung  by  rung; 
And  the  measure  of  our  torment  is  the  measure  of  our  youth, 

God  help  us,  for  we  knew  the  worst  too  young." 

But  who  teaches  these  "too  young"  sons  and  daughters 
the  "worst"?  Who  but  the  Saloon  and  the  Resort  which 
are  licensed  by  the  Law, — together  with  the  Studio  and 
the  Life-Class  and  the  Stage  which  are  licensed  by  Pub- 
lic Opinion. 

The  imminent  question  is — "Shall  we  keep  on  allowing 
this  teaching  by  such  forces,  by  such  influences?" 

Sex  is  not  only  the  Source  of  Life, — it  is  the  Founda- 
tion of  Character, — its  bed  rock  so  long  as  it  is  immacu- 
late, its  quicksand  when  it  bcomes  demoralized.  Protec- 
tion from  both  personal  physical  violence  and  personal 
mental  contamination  is  therefore  the  first  and  most 
vital  right  to  be  secured  to  every  human  being,  as  well 
as  the  right  most  important  to  the  preservation  of  Repub- 
lican  Institutions — no   instance    in   history   being   known 


136  NEW    YORK.    A   SYMPHONIC   STUDY. 

of  a  free  government  long  coexisting  with  prevalent  pri- 
vate profligacy.  While  then  our  first  duty  is  to  prevent 
sex  offences  as  much  as  possible  by  the  direct  training 
of  every  child  in  strength  and  purity  of  mind  and  in 
Strength  and  chastity  of  body, — the  mature  libertine  or 
wanton  who  for  gain  tempts  and  corrupts  the  adolescence 
of  either  sex,  thereby  commits  crime  so  horrible,  so  far 
beyond  any  other,  that  death  or  incarceration  for  life 
would  be  penalties  none  too  severe  if  thereby  others 
could  be  frightened  away  from  similar  intolerable  deeds. 

Unless  the  American  father  wishes  to  see  his  sons 
and  his  grandsons  dropping  down  the  virile  ladder  ''rung 
by  rung" — unless  the  Christian  clergy  wish  to  see  our 
half-Christian  civilization  lapse  back  into  the  lubricity 
and  licentiousness  which  are  Paganism  and  Walt  Whit- 
mowtJW"— that  paganism  into  which  Germany,  France 
and  Italy  have  already  lapsed  through  their  ruthless  and 
matter-of-course  profanations  of  girlhood  and  woman- 
hood— the  paganism  into  which  half  the  literary  and  the 
art  elite  of  England  and  America  are  longing  likewise  to 
lapse,  and  of  which  the  wild  beast  ferocity  of  Prussia  is 
but  the  other  side  of  the  shield  (sensuality  invariably 
making  men  callous,  remorseless,  grasping  and  savage)  ; 
— if,  I  plead,  the  American  father  and  the  American 
clergyman  do  not  wish  eventually  to  witness  all  this,  they 
cannot  too  soon  unite  in  adamantine  array  against  that 
Cult  of  the  Nude  in  Art,  in  Dress,  by  the  Press,  and  on 
the  Stage  which  now,  in  a  low-coiling  and  creeping  but 
determined  sex-flame  is  silently  consuming  American  souls 
in  battalions? 

In  1870,  the  young  artists  of  the  city  of  New  York 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  137 

could  secure  but  one  professional  model  to  pose  for  the 
figure,  but  by  the  year  1905  there  were  enrolled  five 
thousand  artists'  models  many  of  whom  were  of  course 
committed  to  such  posing.  Since  then,  the  multiplication 
of  Art  Museums  with  their  Art  Schools  and  "life"  classes 
throughout  the  land  have  created  a  great  demand  for 
"life"  models.  To  secure  them,  photographers  persuade 
young  girls  of  fifteen  and  sixteen  to  pose  before  the 
camera  and  they  then  show  these  unclothed  portraits  to 
artists  who  pay  fifty  cents  an  hour  to  the  originals  to 
"work"  (so  the  models  call  it)  for  them.  But  business 
and  other  men  can  and  do  pay  much  more  than  this  for 
the  pleasure  of  unclothed  girlhood  at  their  "stag"  ban- 
quets— and  thus  the  nefarious  trafific  flourishes! 

Stage-managers  now  so  insist  on  near-nude  costuming 
in   vaudeville,    farce,    spectacular    and   comedy   choruses, 
that   the   day   of   the   real    nude   on    the    theatre-boards 
can  not  be   far  distant.     Newspaper  editors  and  adver- 
tisers equally  keep  the  woman  form  and  limbs  continually 
before   the   eyes  of   their   leaders; — nay,   Anthony   Corn- 
stock  being  dead,  in  the  last  week  of  September,  1915, 
several    newspapers    printed    a    full-length    photographed 
nude  from  life,  together  with  her  name  and  address,  of 
a  pretty  and  smiling  maiden  of  eighteen,  whose  faultless 
symmetry  of  form  enables  her  admirers  to  claim  for  her 
the  pedestal  of  Annette  Kellerman.     Our  sculptors  and 
painters  now  flagellate  imagination  for  subjects  that  give 
them  an  excuse  to  model  or  to  portray  the  nude,  and  the 
profusion  of  nudes  among  the  statues  and  mural  decora- 
tions of  the  Panama  Exposition  as  compared  with  the 
prevailing  clothed  figures  of  the  Chicago  Exposition  only 


V 

138  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY 

twenty-two  years  before,  proclaim  how  thoroughly  Euro- 
peanized  American  art  and  artists  have  become. 

But  should  we  continue  our  wicked  abandonment  of 
American  girlhood  to  the  temptations  resulting  from  this 
Lust  of  the  Eyes  to  which  American  manhood  has  so 
largely  surrendered?  Should  Christian  matrons  continue 
to  ignore  the  satanic  fact  that  nude  statues  and  paintings 
are  figure-portraits  from  life  of  the  girl  models  who 
pose  for  them  and  are  the  works  of  artists  and  sculptors 
locked  in  with  such  models  day  after  day,  month  after 
month,  year  after  year?  Can  the  morals — can  the  minds 
of  average  men  and  maidens  stand  this  test  unscathed? 
Can  the  nation  enjoying,  condoning,  encouraging  the 
Nude  in  so  many  manifestations  as  this  nation  is  now 
encouraging,  fail  of  becoming  utterly  materialized  and 
sensualized  ?    Impossible ! 

Nor  any  longer  must  the  Law  conspire  with  by  licensing 
the  Saloon — whose  bars,  by  the  way,  are  said  to  be  often 
"lined  with  nudes" ! 

The  Law  must  license  only  Refreshment  Rooms  as  open 
and  innocent  as  the  day,  wherein  the  usual  drinkables, — 
milk,  bouillon,  tea,  coffee,  chocolate,  cocoa,  postum,  soda, 
beers,  mild  wines,  and  fruit  juices  are  sold  in  moderation 
to  any  and  all  reputable  comers:  no  "standing"  alcoholic 
drinks  to  be  permitted  nor  any  such  supplied  without 
food;  the  price  of  every  alcoholic  drinkable  to  include 
therefore  a  suitable  edible;  the  waiting  and  the  serving 
to  be  done  by  reputable  employes  of  both  sexes;  dis- 
tilled liquor  and  decadent  dancing  to  be  rigidly  excluded; 
immoral    women   to   be    rigidly   excluded   and   all   other 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  139 

matrons  and  maidens  welcomed;  and  in  the  evening, 
dancing  and  card  rooms  for  both  young  and  old  under 
proper  chaperonage  to  be  thrown  open  from  these 
Refreshment  Rooms  and  closed  promptly  half  an  hour  or 
an  hour  before  midnight. 

Napoleon's  profound  saying, — "Nothing  is  destroyed 
but  that  which  is  replaced/'  is  the  first  principle  to  stand 
upon  in  planning  the  extirpation  of  vice.  Christendom 
has  reached  a  stage  in  social  evolution  where  Dancing, 
the  Drama,  Card-playing,  and  Alcoholic  Beverages  have 
got  to  be  recognized  as  deep  unconquerable  human  crav- 
ings, in  themselves  innocent,  which,  like  hunger  and 
thirst  and  drowsiness,  must  and  will  be  satisfied,  and 
which,  like  them,  can  be  satisfied  in  perfect  blameless- 
ness.  On  a  date  chosen  for  itself  by  each  of  the  United 
States,  all  the  saloons  of  that  State  should  close  simul- 
taneously and  forever,  and  as  soon  as  possible  from  that 
date  they  should  re-open,  if  at  all.  as  the  People's  Refresh- 
ment and  Recreation  Rooms  outlined  above. 

As  the  champion  of  that  Bible  which  nowhere  forbids 
alcoholic  beverages,  and  whose  Central  Figure,  Jesus 
Christ,  partook  of  meat  and  wine  when  offered  to  Him 
(Luke  7:33,  34),  the  New  Party  could  not  consistently 
endorse  prohibition  nor  demand  total  abstinence  from 
any  one  who  is  not  a  dipsomaniac.  Jesus  changed  water 
into  wine  to  make  glad  a  wedding- feast ;  He  commended 
the  good  Samaritan  for  giving  it  to  the  wounded  traveler, 
and  He  instituted  in  Bread  and  Wine  the  deepest,  highest, 
most  intimate  and  most  precious  religious  rite- the  world 
has  ever  known.  No  one  who  believes  that  Jesus  Christ 
was  the  human  manifestation  of  the  Omnipotent  Eternal 


140  I^'EJV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Son  who  as  "God  the  Word/'  ''created  the  heavens  and 
the  earth," — can  consistently  be  a  prohibitionist.  This 
Creator-God  made  both  the  alcohol  and  the  world-wide 
human  pleasure  in  and  craving  for  it.  In  view  of  these 
latter,  some  important  purpose  must  have  been  intended, 
— a  purpose  that  will  be  balked  if  alcoholic  beverages  are 
altogether  and  everywhere  prohibited.  As  a  sex,  Ameri- 
can women  gave  up  three  generations  ago  the  homemade 
beers  and  cider  of  their  grandmothers,  and  as  a  substitute 
doubled  their  consumption  of  coffee.  This,  the  most 
deleterious  drink  in  the  world,  has  now  become  our  na- 
tional beverage.  It  darkens  the  hair  and  eyes,  yellows 
the  skin,  takes  away  its  roses,  promotes  kidney  and  intes- 
tinal inflammations,  and  slowly  but  surely  sensualizes  the 
race.  If  the  stimulant  and  comfort  of  tea  and  coffee  are 
absolute  necessities  in  our  high-powered  civilization,  why 
may  not  a  modicum  of  alcohol  be  equally  required  in  the 
promotion  of  cheerfulness,  the  conservation  of  tissue  and 
the  reparation  of  fatigue? 

True  that  the  matchless  Bible-teacher  Dwight  L. 
Moody,  the  ideal  saint  Frances  Willard,  and  the  tre- 
mendous evangelist  Billy  Sunday,  together  with  countless 
others  of  the  best  Christian  people  our  country  knows, 
oppose  alcohol  in  every  degree  and  in  all  its  forms.  But 
so  for  a  thousand  years  did  all  the  leading  saints  and 
teachers  of  the  Christian  Church  think  to  reform  sex- 
morals  by  giving  up  marriage.  They  opposed  marriage 
as  lowering,  as  sensual,  as  dangerous,  and,  therefore,  if 
possible,  to  be  foresworn.  Christ  had  told  his  Christians 
they  must  be  faithful  to  one  wife.  ''Impossible/*  decided 
the  Christians.     "If  the  case  of  the  man  be  so  with  his 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  141 

wife,"  said  the  disciples  (that  he  could  not  divorce  her 
when  he  wanted  to),  "it  is  not  good  to  marry"  (Matthew 
19:10).  Consequently,  from  St.  Paul  on,  all  the  elect 
souls  for  centuries  became  monks  and  nuns. 

It  was  fifteen  hundred  years  after  Christ  before  the 
mighty  Martin  Luther  decided  that  what  God  intended 
for  virtuous  mankind  was  not  celibacy,  but  absolutely 
faithful  marriage.  He  himself  consummated  and  carried 
out  such  a  marriage  and  so  did  the  entire  body  of  the 
Protestant  ministry,  all  of  whom  could  now  see  the  wild 
irrational  mistake  of  the  Christian  Church  throughout 
those  heart-breaking  and  licentious  ages.  Since  Luther, 
millions  of  the  laity  have  regarded  and  have  kept,  and 
multi-millions  more  of  the  laity  will  regard  and  will  keep 
marriage   as   Life-consecration   to   One ! 

Its  early  crusade  against  marriage  the  Christian  Church 
is  now  imitating  as  against  alcohol.  In  mild  dilutions, 
in  mild  beers  and  wines  and  punches  and  sangarees,  alco- 
hol was  probably  meant,  like  coffee  and  tea,  to  be  used 
as  a  pleasant  and  comforting  adjunct  to  food.  But  when 
people  stop  eating  they  should  stop  drinking.  This  is 
the  true — the  divine — Imperative  of  Temperance — the 
principle  to  which  we  should  train  the  children,  and  the 
sole  pledge  the  people  should  be  asked  to  sign.  Used  in 
this  way,  alcohol  would  brighten,  not  inflame — would 
cheer  and  not  inebriate." 
When  God  the  Lord  brought  his  people  out  of  Egypt 
and  they  had  entered  the  Promised  Land  He  more  than 
once  warned  them:  "What  thing  so  ever  I  command 
you,  observe  to  do  it;  thou  shalt  not  add  thereto   nor 


142  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

diminish  from  it."  But  there  is  nothing  to  which  the  very 
greatest  saints  are  more  prone  than  to  be  wise  above 
what  is  written  and  to  add  new  sins  to  those  already 
forbidden  by  Omniscient  Deity.  John  Wesley,  for  ex- 
ample, was  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  preachers  of 
the  pure  and  simple  Gospel  of  Jesus  that  Christianity  has 
brought  forth;  yet  to  the  Ten  Commandments  Wesley 
practically  added  for  church  members: 

''Thou  shalt  not  dance." 

"Thou  shalt  not  play  cards." 

"Thou  shalt  not  go  to  the  theatre." 

"Thou  shalt  not  read  fiction" 
and  to  these,  his  great   and  glorious  denomination  has 
added  "Thou  shalt  not  touch  alcohol,"  and  also  for  its 
ministers,  if  I  am  not  mistaken — "Thou  shalt  not  smoke!" 

The  "Christian  Temperance  Union"  is  therefore  utterly 
misnamed,  for  it  means  ''total  abstinence" — whereas  a 
genuine  Christlike  "temperance"  would  hold  and  would 
teach  that  as  "exhilaratives" — alcoholic  drinks  be  taken 
only  with  food,  and  that  they  be  not  used  daily,  but 
reserved  chiefly  for  festivities,  celebrations  and  reunions; 
— and  that  as  "restoratives" — alcoholic  drinks  be  kept  for 
the  elderly,  the  feeble,  the  fainting,  the  exhausted,  the 
prostrated,  and  the  convalescing. 

A  more  presumpuous  affront  to  the  Divine  Son  Eternal 
in  the  Heavens  than  the  unfermented  grape-juice  which 
at  the  Communion  has  in  our  United  States  so  generally 
taken  the  place  of  the  "wine"  ordained  by  Him,  it  is  hard 
to  imagine ! — and  its  result  is  what  might  have  been 
expected.  The  per  capita  drink  bill  in  the  United  States 
does  not  diminish,  but  millions  of  men  and  women  who 


NEW   YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  143 

Otherwise  might  be  rejoicing  and  co-operating  with  God 
in  the  Trinitarian  Faith,  now  look  upon  Jesus  as  merely 
man,  and  his  teaching  on  the  most  tremendous  subjects  as 
fallible  and  as  mistaken  as  they  believe  to  have  been  his 
use  and  his  consecration  of  alcohol. 

"I  believe  in  the  Bible  from  cover  to  cover.  I  don't  pre- 
tend to  understand  it  all.  I  would  consider  myself  low  down 
and  damned  if  with  my  infinitesimal  mind  and  my  jack-rabbit 
and  pig-headed  intellect  I  should  undertake  to  tell  God  that 
I  disapprove  of  his  plan  of  salvation," 

So  declared  Billy  Sunday  to  one  of  his  monster  Phila- 
delphia audiences;  yet,  judging  from  his  total  abstinance 
teaching,  he  does,  he  must, — "disapprove"  of  the  "bread 
and  wine"  partaking  instituted  by  the  Lord  Jesus  as  the 
perpetual  memorial  to  his  infinite,  ineffable  sacrifice ! 


XII. 


For  Equitable  Taxation. 

Industry  being  that  by  which  men  and  women  maintain 
themselves  in  existence,  it  is  therefore  the  equivalent  and 
pledge  of  Life  Itself,  and  consequently  it  should  be  as 
free  and  unhampered  in  seeking  and  appropriating  its 
own  channels  as  are  the  currents  of  the  winds  and  tides 
and  the  meanderings  of  the  rivers  and  streams  of  the 
globe. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  benefits  and  blessings  of  a  just, 
stable,  free,  and  enlightened  government  are  so  infinite 
and   so  priceless,   and   they   have   been   won   through   so 


144  N^^   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

many  generations  of  striving,  tears  and  blood,  that  every 
human  being  living  under  such  a  government  should 
make  a  direct  personal  contribution  towards  its  expenses, 
the  "poor"  as  well  as  the  "rich."  The  New  Party  will 
therefore  favor  Trade  as  "free"  between  all  the  nations 
of  the  globe  as  it  is  between  the  States  of  the  Union, 
and  for  the  customs  and  duties  and  taxes  now  levied  and 
collected  by  the  authorities  will  seek  to  substitute; — 

1.  The  famous  "Single  Tax"  of  Henry  George  on  all 
the  land  within  the  United  States. 

2.  An  annual  Head  Tax  of  one  dollar  ($1.00)  on  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  under  the  United  States  flag. 

3.  An  annual  poll-tax  of  one  dollar  ($1.00)  on  all 
legal  voters, — whether  they  vote  or  not, — with  another 
dollar  as  fine  upon  every  voter  that  does  not  vote. 

4.  A  franchise-due  of  five  dollars  ($5.00),  obligatory 
on  all  native  Americans  eligible  to  the  American  ballot 
who  are  twenty-one  years  of  age;  but  payable  by  foreign- 
ers only  in  case  of  naturalization. 

5.  An  invariable  percentage  of  all  inheritances,  no 
matter  how  small  the  inheritance. 

6.  A  revenue  stamp  upon  all  bank  checks  and  amuse- 
ment tickets. 

7.  A  revenue  stamp  upon  all  bills  of  sale  whatsoever 
of  one  dollar  or  over, — whether  the  sale  be  of  services 
from  one  person  to  another  or  to  an  organization;  or 
of  immovables,  like  lands,  mines  and  buildings;  or  of 
movables,  as  furnishings,  clothing,  jewelry,  books,  edibles, 
and  drinkables;  or  of  values,  as  stocks,  bonds,  and  shares. 

If  all  sales  whatsoever  of  over  one  dollar  required  a 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  145 

revenue  stamp  whose  value  would  be  decided  by  the 
amount  of  the  sale  (as,  for  example,  one  cent  01  less  on 
all  sales  between  one  and  ten  dollars;  two  cents  or  less 
on  all  sales  between  ten  and  twenty-five  dollars,  and  so 
on  progressively),  then  the  larger  the  sale  the  higher  the 
figure  on  the  stamp.  The  working-classes  purchase  little 
and  would  pay  little:  those  better  off  would  purchase 
more  and  would  pay  more,  up  to  the  opulent,  who,  buying 
a  vast  deal  more,  would  pay  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
and  value  of  their  purchases  and  this  would  be  Taxation 
Justice! 

This  stamp  tax  on  all  sales  was  part  of  the  revenue 
system  of  the  Diaz  regime  in  Mexico  under  his  enlight- 
ened Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Limantour,  and  is  the 
most  ideally  equitable  tax  the  writer  has  ever  heard  of. 


XIII. 


Of  the  Army  and  the  Police. 

The  horrible  onslaught  of  Germany  against  the  peace 
and  happiness  of  nations, — with  her  bandit-robbing  of 
Belgium  from  the  Belgians,  demonstrates  that  peoples  and 
governments  are  not  to  be  trusted,  but  that  at  any  time 
any  nation,  with  strength  and  prowess  enough  may 
attack  and  take  possession  of  another.  The  sole  safety, 
then,  is  in  being  prepared;  and  to  this  end  the  New 
Party,  following  the  lead  of  Switzerland,  will  plead  that 
the  standing  army  of  the  United  States  shall  in  future 
consist  only  of  native-born  officers;  and  that  the  func- 
tion and  duty  of  these  officers  shall  be  to  drill  all  the  male 


146  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

youth  of  the  country  between  fifteen  and  twenty-five  in 
military  exercises  and  the  use  of  firearms,  so  that  at  any 
time  a  million  soldiers  may  be  swiftly  mobilized,  and 
several  millions  more  be  ready  to  respond  as  soon  as 
wanted. 

Foreign-born  police  officers  should  be  given  up,  and  the 
police  system  everywhere  entrusted  to  the  officers  of  the 
army  and  its  ranks  filled  from  the  native-born  young  men 
under  thirty  who  have  been  drilled  by  these  officers. 

To  guard  and  defend  the  nation,  to  protect  life  and 
property,  to  keep  down  vice  and  crime,  to  seek  out  and 
arrest  the  criminal — are  high  and  solemn  and  masterful 
functions  which  should  be  assumed  and  carried  out  only 
by   disciplined  and   incorruptible   Hereditary   Americans. 


XIV. 


For  the  Autonomy  of  Nations. 

The  New  Party  will  vigorously  uphold  the  principle  of 
the  Autonomy  of  all  Monogamous  Nations, — each  to  have 
its  own  territory,  its  own  flag,  its  own  language,  and  Its 
preferred  form  of  government. 

Polygamous  nations,  like  the  Turks,  or  licentious  peo- 
ples, like  the  Hindus,  and  also  savage  races  whose  women 
do  all  the  work  while  the  men  only  loaf,  or  fight,  or  feast, 
— of  all  these  the  manhood  is  so  emasculated  and  degen- 
erated by  sensuality  and  sloth  that  for  the  sake  of  the 
womanhood  they  oppress  and  degrade,  and  to  prevent 
the  inferior  childhood  which  results,  the}'  deserve  to  be 
taken  posession  of  by  consensus  of  stronger  because  mono- 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  147 

gamous  nations  and  held  in  tutelage  for  their  own  good 
and  the  good  of  the  world,  until  better  laws  and  usages 
shall  have  trained  them  nearer  to  the  manhood  and 
womanhood  standards  of  Christian  civilizations. 

In  fact,  it  is  the  clear  conviction  of  the  writer  that  the 
time  is  already  here  when  the  white  men  of  the  country, 
in  their  several  States,  should  enact  legislation  which  will 
rescue  the  black  men  of  the  land  from  their  racial  sloth 
and  licentiousness,  by  compelling  them, — first:  to  daily- 
wage-earning  work  five  and  a  half  days  out  of  seven,  and, 
second:  to  practice  the  monogamic  marriage  and  main- 
tain the  monogamous  homes  with  which  white  manhood 
for  ages  has  uplifted  and  morally  protected  its  own 
women  and  their  offspring. 


XV. 


An  International  Alliance  of  Republics. 

The  New  Party  will  urge  that  negotiations  be  at  once 
started  with  all  de  facto  Republics  throughout  the  globe 
for  an  International  Alliance  on  the  following  basis : 

Trade  and  Commerce  to  be  as  free  between  all  the 
Republics  as  they  now  are  between  the  States  of  our  own 
Union ; 

All  the  Republics  to  contribute  their  proportion  of 
soldiers,  ships,  munitions,  and  equipment  for  an  allied 
army  and  navy  which  will  defend  any  Allied  Republic 
against  the  world; 

The    Allied   Republics   to   hold   a   bi-cameral,   two-sex 


148  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

Parliament  every  two  years  in  the  capitals  of  Washing- 
ton, Paris,  and  Rio  de  Janeiro  (or  Buenos  Ayres)  in 
turn;  each  Republic  to  send  four  delegates  to  the  Parlia- 
ment,— two  leading  men  to  the  House  of  Men,  and  two 
leading  women  to  the  House  of  Women ;  the  delegates  to 
serve  four  years,  and  one-half  of  them  to  be  elected  every 
two  years; 

Dating  from  the  assembling  and  organization  of  the 
first  of  such  Parliaments,  any  revolution  or  rebellion  in 
any  of  the  AlHed  Republics,  if  injurious  to  other  nations 
or  in  violation  of  treaty  rights,  to  come  before  the  Stand- 
ing Judiciary  Committee  or  Court  of  Appeal  of  the 
Alliance,  and  the  offending  Republic  to  accept  the  dictum 
of  the  Court  until  a  special  session  of  the  Parliment  of 
the  Alliance  can  be  summoned  and  the  case  adjudicated 
by  majority  vote  of  both  Houses  taken  separately. 

Had  such  an  Alliance  of  Republics  been  in  existence  in 
the  last  and  in  this  century,  the  Boer  Republics  would  not 
have  been  wiped  out,  France  would  not  have  been  attacked 
by  Germany  in  1914  nor  the  "big  stick"  brought  into  play 
against  the  protesting  Philippines,  nor  Panama  have  been 
torn  from  protesting  Columbia,  nor  United  States  pro- 
tectorates have  been  established  over  the  feeble  Central 
American  and  Carribean  Republics,  nor  threatened,  as 
during  1913-14,  against  the  important  Republic  of  Mex- 
ico,— all  of  them  precedents  of  the  utmost  danger  to  the 
continuance  of  this  our  own  Republic  as  such,  li  we 
wish  to  kill  American  Republican  ideals  and  institutions 
and  insensibly  evolve  into  an  Empire,  we  have,  since  the 
year  1898.  taken  the  surest  way  to  achieve  this  betraynl 


XEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  149 

of  our  forefathers  and  of  their  foundation  principle  that 
"all  just  governments  derive  their  power  from  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed." 

XVI. 

To  Restore  Palestine  to  Israel. 

The  New  Party  will  appeal  to  the  nations  of  Christen- 
dom on  behalf  of  the  purchase  of  Palestine  and  its  pre- 
sentation to  the  Jewish  people  scattered  throughout  the 
world, — this  their  own  land  to  be  restored  to  them  as  the 
expression  of  the  world's  gratitude  and  recognition  for 
their  inestimable  gift  to  mankind  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  as  well  as  of  the  world's  repentance  for  the 
horrors  inflicted  upon  their  ancestors  by  the  Christendom 
of  the  past;  each  nation  to  contribute  to  the  purchase- 
money  in  proportion  to  their  governmental  income,  and 
the  land  to  be  presented,  not  as  Palestine  is  to-day,  but 
irrigated   and   re-forested   and   re-fertilized. 

Toward  these  last  objects,  each  contributing  nation  to 
keep  in  Palestine  with  its  present  pay  and  rations,  a  pro- 
portional contingent  of  its  standing  army  to  work  on  the 
irrigation  canals  until  all  are  dug  and  completed,  all 
forest-lands  replanted,  and  the  phenomenal  stones  of 
her  fields  measurably  removed  and  ground  into  cement 
for  building  and  paving  purposes. 

XVII. 

Of  a  Seventh-day  instead  of  a   ^irst-day  Sabbath. 
The  New  Party  will   agitate  throughout  the  Christian 


150  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

world  the  transfer  of  its  weekly  Rest  Day  from  the  first 
day  of  the  week,  or  Sunday,  to  the  seventh,  or  Saturday 
— the  Sabbath  to  begin  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  day, 
Friday,  as  originally  instituted  by  Moses  and  as  still 
observed  by  the  orthodox  Jews  throughout  the  world. 

To  the  best  being  and  achievement  of  the  human  race 
one  Day  of  Rest  in  seven  is  indispensable.  The  far  higher 
ratio  of  scientific  thought  and  will-force  of  the  peoples 
who  rest  and  relax  one  day  in  seven  is  proven  by  the 
great  time-and-space-and-labor-saving  inventions  of  the 
Sunday-keeping  Scotch  and  English  and  Americans  be- 
yond anything  comparable  in  the  inventions  of  those  who 
do  not  thus  set  aside  one  seventh  of  every  week. 

Of  course  it  is  the  principle  of  the  thing  that  is  im- 
portant, and  not  whether  the  rest-day  be  observed  on  the 
seventh  or  on  the  first  day  of  the  week.  Unfortunately, 
the  Jews,  who,  like  the  Christians,  came  to  our  shores  in 
search  of  liberty  and  prosperity,  declined  to  recognize  the 
Christian  sabbath  and  kept  to  that  instituted  by  Moses 
more  than  three  thousand  years  before, — namely,  from 
Friday  sundown  to  Saturday  sundown.  Then  they  claimed 
that,  having  kept  their  own  rest-day,  they  must  in  justice 
be  permitted  to  work  and  to  trade  on  the  Christian  rest- 
day. 

As  this  seemed  fair,  this  was  allowed;  but  with  the 
unforeseen  result  that  the  American  ''Sunday"  sabbath 
is  rapidly  becoming  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  Day  of  Rest 
for  all  employed  men  and  women  is  by  many  continually 
more  and  more  devoted  to  long  hours  of  labor, — especially 
to  those  labors  that  minister  to  "pay"  amusements  and 
recreations,  such  as  news  stands,  soda  fountains,  saloons. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  151 

and  restaurants;  or  as  surface  cars,  railroads  and  steam- 
boats ;  or  as  concerts,  theatres,  shows,  and  games  of  every 
description.  Save  in  their  brief  summer  vacations,  em- 
ployed men  and  women  by  millions  in  this  country  now 
know  no  rest-day,  because  they  are  serving  their  fellow- 
beings  in  the  above  vocations  every  day  in  the  week  and 
doubly  so  on  Sundays. 

That  this  sabbath-breaking  by  both  the  money-earning 
amusers  and  the  money-spending  amused  must  in  the  end 
seriously  fatigue  and  deteriorate  the  hitherto  alert  and 
able  and  sinewy  American  mind,  and  render  it  unable  to 
think  and  to  will  in  the  future  as  it  has  in  the  past,  is 
as  clear  as  the  sun  in  heaven.  Between  the  Jewish  Satur- 
day sabbath  and  the  Christian  Sunday  one,  the  land  now 
has  little  or  no  sabbath.  But  with  the  Day  of  Rest  put 
back  to  its  ancient  Sinai-given  place  at  the  end  of  the 
week,  and  beginning  with  the  close  of  the  day  before 
(according  both  to  its  original  institution  and  also  its 
restoration  by  the  Scotch  and  English  and  New  England 
Puritans),— the  Jewish  Bible  believer  would  be  so  at 
one  with  the  American  Bible  believer  in  demanding  its 
genuine  and  general  observance,  that  together  they  could 
hardly  fail  of  securing  it. 

Should  the  Christian  world  decline  to  change  its  Day  of 
Rest  from  the  first  to  the  seventh  day  of  the  week,  the 
New  Party  will  at  least  attempt  legislation  whereby  the 
Sabbath  shall  begin  on  Saturday  afternoon,  at  five  o'clock, 
and  all  stores,  saloons,  games  and  theatrical  amusements 
be  closed  from  that  hour  until  the  next  day  at  noon. 
As  the  seventh  day  of  the  week  draws  to  its  close,  such 
universal  pause  and  hush  should  descend  upon  the  land 


152  AEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

that  its  dwellers  must  perforce  rest  and  relax  not  only 
from  toil  but  also  from  excitement — remaining  in  their 
homes  to  renew  their  affections,  or  assembling  in  their 
churches  and  halls  to  lift  up  their  souls. 

"The  world  is  too  much  with  us;  late  and  soon — 
Getting  and  spending — we  lay  waste  our  powers." 

"The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  said  the  Lord  Jesus, 
"not  man  for  the  sabbath." 


XVIII. 


Against  a   Third   Term. 

The  New  Party  will  seek  to  amend  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  by  prohibiting  a  third  term  to  the 
President  and  by  enacting  that  ex-presidents  shall  auto- 
matically become  ex-officio  United  States  Senators-at- 
large  for  life  and  shall  receive  from  the  nation  the  salary 
of  a  senator. 


XIX. 


Of  Postmasters. 

As  the  only  common-sensible  plan,  postmasters  should 
be  elected  by  the  voters  of  their  jurisdiction  for  life  or 
good  behavior  and  they  should  be  confirmed  by  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  United  States  Post  Office  Department.  The 
President  of  the  country  should  have  nothing  to  do  with 
them,  and  so  the  New  Party  will  maintain. 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  153 

XX. 

Of  Government  Ownership. 

In  the  belief  that  the  ruin  of  Americanism  lies  that 
way,  the  New  Party  will  actively  and  ardently  oppose  all 
laws  and  all  government  enterprises  that  look  to  govern- 
ment ownership  and  operation  of  public  utilities  other 
than  those  by  long  prescription  already  in  public  control, 
— as  roads,  water-works,  the  mails,  and  so  on. 

One  of  the  most  original  and  remarkable  principles  of 
American  statesmanship  was  that  of  the  great  Jefferson : 
"The  best  government  is  that  which  governs  least" — an 
axiom  that  could  have  been  evolved  and  followed  only 
by  a  determined  and  gifted  people  who  came  to  a  virgin 
continent  with  but  their  own  hands  and  feet  to  help  them 
subdue  it.  Under  its  infinite  freedom  and  inspiration  the 
United  States  has  attained  the  financial  leadership  of  the 
world,  and  it  is  foreignism  pure  and  simple,  foreignism 
as  born  and  reared  for  centuries  by  Catholicism  and 
Kaiserism,  foreignism  that  wants  neither  to  think,  nor 
to  plan,  nor  to  initiate  for  itself — American  fashion — 
but  to  have  all  these  done  for  it,  which  is  now  demand- 
ing that  American  Business  shall  be  brought  under  gov- 
ernment control,  and  thus  the  whole  land  become  a  vast 
bureaucracy,  with  amply  paid  and  generously  pensioned 
government  places  as  "snug  harbors"  for  life  for  every 
foreign-born  and  foreign-fathered  man  that  wants  one ! 

Wheresoever  the  carcase  is,  there  the  vultures  are 
gathered  together! 

That  the  government  ownership  of  public  utilities  and 


154  A'£^   YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

"big  business"  in  all  its  forms  would  enormously  increase 
the  number  of  civil  service  positions,  and  that  this  in- 
crease is  the  motive  of  the  majority  of  those  pushing 
this  foreign  gospel  throughout  our  land,  is  self-evident; 
but  let  it  once  be  nationally  accepted  and  adopted,  this 
gospel,  and  its  inevitable  fruit  will  be  the  gradual  slow- 
ing-down  and  eventual  stagnation  of  our  hitherto  up- 
springing,  irrepressible,  ever-inventing  and  progressing 
Americanism.  Beginning  with  Egypt  (Genesis  42:34-35), 
plenty  of  nations  have  tried  paternalism,  just  as  plenty 
have  also  tried  separation  of  the  sexes  in  education. 
Do  we  wish  to  echo  them?  Germany  may  excel  in  "re- 
search," but  where  are  the  great  transforming  Inventions 
of  Germany  compared  with  those  of  Great  Britain  and 
of  this  Republic  which  have  blessed  and  advanced  man- 
kind? 

The  Wilson  Administration  is  amiably  and  pleasantly 
deferring  to  its  great  Catholic  (otherwise  foreign)  po- 
litical and  labor  element.  It  employs  Catholic  secretaries 
and  clerks,  attends  Catholic  masses,  and  sends  the  sailors 
of  its  wa^  ships  to  pay  their  respects  to  the  Catholic 
Pope.  Against  the  non-paternalism  of  Thomas  Jefferson, 
it  is  laying  a  heavy  hand  on  American  business.  It  is 
striving  to  go  into  government  ship-owning  and  through 
the  parcel-post  and  municipal  markets  it  is  carrying  on 
retail  distribution  between  farmers  and  housewives  in- 
stead of  exhorting  and  encouraging  the  latter  to  organ- 
ize their  own  retail  trading.  It  is  not  clear  to  the  writer's 
mind  that  for  this  last  it  could  not  be  impeached  as  going 
beyond  its  constitutional  limits.  In  Part  One  of  this 
book   I   said  that   the   Democratic   Party   is  dead.     The 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  155 

country  thinks  it  has  come  to  life.  If  by  that  Party  is 
meant  the  party  of  Thomas  Jefferson— it  has  not. 
Thomas  Jefferson  was  a  native-born,  non-Catholic  Ameri- 
can. The  present-day  Democratic  Party  is  guided  and 
controlled  by  the  Catholic  foreign-born-and-fathered-and- 
grandfathered  of  its  constituency. 


XXI. 


Of  Copyrights  and  Patents. 
As  the  "party  of  justice"  the  New  Party  will  demand 
that  the  property-rights  of  authors  in  their  writings  and 
of  inventors  in  their  patents,  shall  continue  as  long  as 
they  live  and  be  transmissible  to  their  heirs  and  hy  their 
heirs  precisely  as  is  every  other  property.  One  of  the 
mcredible  oversights  of  the  law  is  the  appropriation  after 
a  brief  period  by  publishers  and  manufacturers  of  the 
money  rewards  of  talent  and  genius  in  authorship  and 
invention.  What  fortunes,  for  example,  must  have  been 
made  out  of  the  books  by  Charles  Dickens,  that  joy  and 
idol  of  English-speaking  millions;  yet  a  few  years  ago 
two,  at  least,  of  his  children  were  so  reduced  in  cir- 
cumstances that  a  life-fund  had  to  be  raised  for  them  by 
his  countrymen ! 


XXII. 


Three  Needed  National  Commissions. 
The  New  Party  will  demand  the  creation  of  three  Na- 
tional Commissions  on  behalf  of  the  following  investiga- 
tions : 


156  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

First, — a  Commission  composed  of  leading  historians 
who  shall  collect  and  review  all  the  evidence  obtainable 
as  to  the  personal  moral  character  of  that  George  Wash- 
ington who  for  a  hundred  years  was  adored  as  the  match- 
less and  immaculate  Father  of  his  Country,  but  who,  since 
the  accusation  against  him  by  an  Irish-American  editor 
in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1884*,  has  become  more 
and  more  discredited,  until  now — not  Washington  but 
Lincoln  is  the  supreme  idol  and  ideal  of  the  American 
people. 

The  two  influential  journalists,  E.  L.  Godkin  and  Will- 
iam Elroy  Curtis  who  (the  latter  many  years  after  the 
former)  in  their  newspaper  columns  attributed  also  to 
Washington  the  so-called  "vices  of  a  gentleman"  which 
in  the  cases  of  Franklin,  Jefferson,  and  Hamilton  can 
not  be  denied — never  gave  in  print  the  degrading  story 
which  for  generations  has  haunted  the  Washington  clubs 
and  which  probably  originated  in  Virginia,  where  Wash- 
ington was  scorned,  detested  and  maligned  by  the  colonial 
landed  aristocracy  which  through  his  triumphant  leading 
of  the  Revolution  lost  its  right  of  primo-geniture  and  its 
passionately  cherished  allegiance  to  the  British  crown; 
but  that  the  story  in  question  has  now  been  whispered 
from  one  end  of  the  Union  to  the  other  is  evident  from 
the  widely  separated  sections  and  social  classes  in  which 
one  may  come  upon  it.  It  is  the  highest  time,  therefore, 
that  if  not  true  it  be  authoritatively  branded  as  false  and 
forever  laid  to  rest.t 

Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  divinely-planned  and  divinely- 

•  See  Part  I,  pp.  436-439.  t  Read  letters,  Appendix  B. 


NEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  157 

missioned  man,  and  not  one  throb  of  love  and  gratitude 
toward  him  from  the  American  people  would  the  writer 
abate;  but  to  compare  his  rescue  ability  in  saving  the 
Union  with  Washington's  constructive  ability  in  creating 
it,  is  like  comparing  the  fireman  who  quenches  the  blaze 
in  a  splendid  State  house  with  the  architect  who  designed 
and  builded  it,  and  to  measure  the  gratitude  we  as  Ameri- 
cans owe  to  Lincoln  with  that  we  owe  to  Washington 
would  be  to  value  the  paid  doctor  who  in  a  crisis  saves 
one's  life,  with  the  father  who  gave  the  life  to  begin 
with,  and  then — through  long  devoted  years  of  striving, 
struggle  and  fidelity — fully  and  freely  nurtured,  sustained, 
trained,  and  magnificently  endowed  it! 

A  second  National  Commission  should  find  out, — 
a.  How  many  foreign-born-and-fathered-and-grand- 
fathered  adults  and  youths,  both  naturalized  and  non- 
naturalized,  are  in  civil-service  positions  throughout  the 
United  States  and  her  island  possessions, — from  the 
scrub-women  and  street-sweepers  employed  and  paid  by 
towns,  states,  and  the  nation,  up  to  town,  county,  state, 
and  national  teachers,  mayors,  governors,  clerks,  senators, 
representatives,  judges,  or  any  other  public-service  office? 
b;  How  many  men  and  officers  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
are  foreign-born-or-fathered? 

c.  What  is  the  race,  religion,  education,  and  political 
party  of  each  and  every  one  of  the  foreign-born-or-fath- 
ered who  are  in  the  public  service  ? 

d.  In  what  town  and  State  is  each  of  them  living? 

e.  What  proportion  do  these  foreign-born-or-fathered 
public  service  incumbents  bear  to  the  hereditary  American 


158  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

incumbents   of   similar   offices   in   the   same   towns   and 
States  ? 

f.  How  many  owners,  editors,  sub-editors  and  report- 
ers of  newspapers  and  magazines  are  among  our  foreign- 
born-or-f  athered  ? 

g.  How  many  of  our  greatest  criminals  and  of  our 
lesser,  of  our  drunkards,  of  our  saloon  and  dive  and 
gambling-place  keepers,  of  our  panders,  procurers,  pro- 
curesses and  prostitutes,  of  our  chorus-girls  and  artists- 
models,  are  foreign-born-or-f athered  ? 

The  findings  of  such  a  Commission  on  the  Foreign- 
born-or-fathered  are  urgently  needed  by  hereditary 
American  voters,  that  they  may  know  where  our  country 
stands,  both  morally  and  politically,  and  may  decide  in- 
telligently whether  they  will  continue  to  be  ruled  and 
governed  and  depraved  by  the  foreign-born-or-fathered 
national  minority  which  in  many  towns  and  cities  and  sev- 
eral states  is  now  a  state  and  local  majority,  and  will  also 
continue  to  allow  more  and  more  of  these  aliens  to  land 
and  settle  among  us  with  the  inevitable  result  that  sooner 
or  later  their  now  local  majorities  will  become  a  national 
and  universal  one ! 

The  Third  National  Commission  suggested  should  in- 
vestigate and  estimate 

a.  The  probable  financial  value  to  the  family  and  to 
the  community  of  the  universal  indoor  labors  of  woman- 
hood and  girlhood  before  the  age  of  steam-machinery  as 
compared  with  the  outdoor  labors  of  manhood  and  boy- 
hood during  the  same  era; — and 

b.  The  expense  to  their   families  and  to   the   nation 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  IS9 

of  the  servant-keeping  American  womanhood  which  to- 
day in  its  homes  is  wholly  supported  by  its  fathers  and 
husbands. 

The  writer  believes  that  such  an  investigation  would 
demonstrate  that  this  approximately  two  million  educated 
wives  and  daughters  who  are  not  giving  any  financial 
equivalent  for  their  up-keep — are  a  daily  drain  upon  the 
pocket-books  of  their  bread-winners  and  therefore  a 
dead-weight  upon  the  nation  equal  to  the  present  daily  ex- 
penditure of  the  British  Empire  in  the  German  War; 
but  she  also  believes  that  this  economic  condition  once 
authoritatively  demonstrated  to  educated  American 
women,  they  will  seriously  address  themselves  to  the 
only  possible  solution  of  the  problem  by  everywhere  or- 
ganizing themselves  as  the  Retail  Distributors  of  the 
Family  Food  and  Clothing  Supply  of  the  nation,  thereby 
saving  to  their  bread-winners  the  cost  of  paying  "a  mil- 
lion small  merchants"  to  do  what  they,  as  its  home- 
makers,  could  do  far  better,  and  also  saving  to  the  world 
the  now  simply  awful  wastage  of  their  own  womanhood 
time,  talent  and  energy. 

The  most  beautiful,  as  surely  it  is  the  sole  all-compre- 
hending definition  of  "love" — is  that  "Love  is  the  estab- 
lishing of  right  relations." 

The  imperious,  the  well-night  frantic  demand  of  the 
present  hour  is  for  the  establishing  of  right  relations  be- 
tween the  sexes, — the  closest  mutual  relation  of  human 
life.  Alas,  at  the  very  foundation  of  their  earthly  exist- 
ence lies  the  question  of  their  financial  relations !    Unless 


V 

l6o  NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

these  are  "right,"  national  happiness  is  impossible,  na- 
tional prosperity  is  impossible,  national  virtue  is  impos- 
sible ;  for  a  "supported"  instead  of  a  self-supporting  wom- 
anhood is  by  the  very  nature  of  things  the  target  for  all 
the  slings  and  arrow^s  of  outrageous  fortune,  and  is, 
therefore,  and  must  be,  the  Victim  and  the  Sufferer  par 
excellence  of  that  "v^^hole  creation  which  groaneth  and 
travaileth  together  in  pain  until  now." 

Mr.  Edward  A.  Woods,  president  of  the  National  Asso- 
ciation of  Life  Underwriters,  recently  said  in  the  Asso- 
ciation News  that  the  traffic  in  women  and  virtue,  or 
"commercialized  vice,"  costs  the  city  of  New  York  sev- 
enty-five million  dollars,  and  the  country  directly  and  in- 
directly over  three  billion  dollars  a  year! 

Can  a  more  awful  indictment  be  brought  against  the 
manhood  of  a  city  or  of  a  country  than  this  demoraliza- 
tion and  destruction  of  its  girlhood?  Can  manhood  ex- 
cuse and  extenuate  this  stupendous  guilt  by  accusing 
girlhood  and  womanhood  of  being  willing  partners  in 
their  own  degradation  ? 

''Woman  is  non-dependable"  said  in  debate  the  influ- 
ential Methodist  divine  of  New  York,  Dr.  James  M. 
Buckley ;  "like  music,  she  lends  herself  with  equal  facility 
to  the  church,  the  ball-room,  and  the  orgy." 

This  is  true,  though  true  not  because  of  woman's  char- 
acter, or  of  her  physique,  or  of  her  mind,  or  of  her 
heart — all  of  which  to  the  last  fibre  are  homologous  to 
those  of  man.  The  difference,  nay,  the  contrast  in  her 
nature  which  betrays  her  to  him  and  makes  her  his  moral 
victim,  is  in  her  temperament. 

Character  can  be  transformed,  mind  can  be  enlightened, 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  i6] 

soul  can  be  enlarged, — but  temperament  is  unchangeable, 
imperishable,  ineradicable.  The  temperament  of  woman 
is  fluid;  the  temperament  of  man  is  stable;  and  herein 
is  the  master-key  to  this  world-tragedy  of  the  Social 
Evil — as  a  certain  nature-comparison,  so  it  seems  to  me, 
most  wonderfully  illustrates. 

For  the  earth  on  which  we  live  is  a  great  sphere  of 
two  features  and  two  only — Land  and  Water. 

All  over  the  earth  this  land  runs  under  and  sustains 
this  water  and  also  in  continents  and  islands  it  rises 
above  and  shapes  the  water;  and  all  over  the  earth  this 
water  seeks  and  clings  to  and  caresses  the  land — in 
streams,  rivers,  ponds  and  lakes  everywhere  diversifying, 
fertilizing  and  adorning  it,  in  vapor,  mist,  and  cloud 
mounting  above  even  the  loftiest  peaks  to  brood  and  float 
over  its  surface,  then  descending  again  upon  it  in  the 
dews  and  rains  and  snows  lacking  whose  never-failing 
ministry  every  plant  and  animal  upon  it  would  die,  and 
the  whole  sphere  become  a  stony  or  a  sandy  desert. 

On  the  other  hand — without  the  fixed  and  dominating 
land,  the  water  would  and  could  be  but  a  shoreless  and 
aimless  waste  of  tossing  billows. 

What  a  magnificent  and  perfect  symbol  of  the  sexes 
in  their  deepest  inter-relations  is,  then,  our  God-made 
earth  with  its  two  contrasting,  co-working  divisions! 
How  divinely  do  they  daily  and  nightly  plead  with  their 
human  prototypes  to  fulfil  toward  each  other  those  an- 
swering obligations  which  build  up  ideal  humanity — the 
World-brother  everywhere  sustaining,  guiding,  uplifting — 
the  World-sister  everywhere  bestowing  and  beautifying, 


i62  NEV/    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

sympathizing  and   softening,   inspiring   and  quickening— 
the  deepest  cry  of  her  heart,  the  inmost  motive  of  her 
action,    whether    conscious    or    unconscious,    being    ever 
and  always : 

"I  will  be  near  him  or  will  die ! 
I  will  grow  round  him  in  his  place — 
Grow,  live,  die,  looking  in  his  face — 
Die,  dying,  clasped  in  his  embrace!" 

Tremendous  is  the  responsibility  of  manhood  toward 
womanhood  on  account  of  this  contrast  of  her  tempera- 
ment with  his  own.  Whatever  may  be  true  of  the  self- 
dependence  and  self-guidance  of  individual  women,  the 
woman  masses  of  a  nation  can  no  more  help  conforming 
to  the  men  of  that  nation  than  water  can  help  conforming 
to  the  land.  Whatever  ideals  manhood  may  cherish  for 
his  womankind — whether  to  be  pure  as  snow,  chaste  as 
ice,  wise  as  the  ant,  industrious  as  the  bee,  or  inconse- 
quential as  the  butterfly — he  has  but  to  intimate  and  she 
will  respond;  but  alas,  equally  if  he  plunges  into  the 
baleful  abyss  of  the  passions,  will  she  companion  him 
there. 

And  how  many  supreme  peoples  of  the  world  have  dis- 
appeared down  those  abysses!  The  earth  is  strewn  with 
the  ruins  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  Babylon,  Persia,  India, 
Greece,  Rome, — and  who  knows  which  of  the  nations 
struggling  to-day  in  this  hellish  war  (1915)  will  emerge 
on  top?  One  thing  alone  is  certain.  It  will  be  the  nation 
of  which  the  motherhood  has  most  been  encouraged  to 
walk  on  the  heights  with  manhood  as  those  "Plain  People," 


NEW    YORK:   A    ^YMFHUMC   bTL'DY.  163 

Billy  and  "Ma"   Sunday,   are  now  walking   and  thereby 
achieving  incredible  things ! 

The  pure,  limpid,  live-giving,  heaven-born  Water! 
The  pure,  limpid,  life-giving,  heaven-born  Feminine  ! 
When  manhood  shall  understand  that  it  is  net  because 
she  is  gross  and  sensual  to  begin  with  that  woman  to  her 
own  defiling  has  so  often  yielded  to  him,  but  because  it 
is  the  constitution  of  her  soul  to  answer  his  soul,  yes,  even 
to  making  his  evil  her  good — will  he  thereafter  make  a 
covenant  with  himself  nevermore  in  the  future  to  tempt 
her  down  into  the  sewers  of  his  nature,  but  rather,  in 
fellowship  with  her  more  spiritual  one — 
On  eagle  wings 
To  mount — to  fly — 
And  soar  on  high 
Until  they  reach 
Eternity  f 
With  the  manhood  resolve  and  conduct  in  this  connec- 
tion rests  the  continuance  or  the   disappearance   of  the 
Social  Evil. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


THE  LAST   WORD. 


Should  any  Hereditary  Americans  honor  by  reading 
this  semi-articulate  book,  let  themv  .not  dismiss  it  from 
their  minds  without  pondering  seriously,  each  one  of 
them,  on  the  crying  need  of  a  True  American  Party,  or 
Party  of  Justice,  as  in  the  foregoing  pages  suggested; 
"True  American,"  instead  of  simply  "American,"  because, 
unless  our  Republic  wishes  to  perish  within  this  century, 
it  mu§t, — it  simply  must, — by  substituting  Personal  for 
its  present  Ward  and  District  Representation,  get  itself 
out  of  the  foreign  hands  which  are  exploiting  and  under- 
mining it  back  into  the  native  hands  and  hearts  which 
will  love,  uphold,  and  upbuild  it;  and  equally  the  'Tarty 
of  Justice"  because  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
the  world,  through  it  will  be  extended  to  the  feminine 
half  of  the  race  Representation  in  legislative  and  alder- 
manic  bodies  by  as  many  women  nominated  and  elected 
by  women,  as  on  the  manhood  side  of  the  house  there 
are  men  nominated  and  elected  by  men. 

Owing  to  our  criminal  supineness,  mushy  sentimental- 
ity, base  want  of  respect  for  ourselves  and  of  reverence 
for  our  ancestors,  together  with  craven,  unmanly  fear 
of  Catholic  blackmail  and  assassination — a  foreign-born- 
and-fathered-and-grandfathered    Denominational    Minor 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  165 

ity  is  ruling  and  governing  these  United  States,  though 
they  themselves  have  recently  declared  in  public  that 
they  number  but  sixteen  millions, — about  one-sixth  of  our 
population,  that  is,  and  they  hold  probably  but  one-tenth 
of  our  wealth. 

Sixteen  millions  dominating  nearly  one  hundred  mil- 
lions! What  dazzHng  triumph  for  them!  What  black 
ignominy  for  us ! 

Not  our  Catholic  or  our  Jewish  immigrants,  but  our 
Protestant  forefathers  and  foremothers  planted  and 
reared  these  our  Federated  Republics,  watering  them  with 
their  sweat,  their  tears,  and  often  with  their  blood.  Their 
beginnings  as  colonies  were  within  the  first  ten  years  of 
the  seventeenth  century  (1607),  and  it  was  but  eleven 
years  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth,  (1789)  that  the 
United  States  of  America  inaugurated  their  first  Presi- 
dent. One  hundred  and  eighty  years,  then,  did  it  take  the 
conquerors  of  the  North  American  forests  to  evolve  amid 
those  forests  the  institutions  that  have  so  exalted  their 
descendants  in  the  scale  of  nations  and  so  incalculably 
benefitted  mankind. 

These  institutions  belong  first  of  all  to  Our  Posterity. 
To  surrender  our  children's  inheritance  to  any  hut  those 
children  is  not  only  flagrant  injustice  to  and  spoliation  of 
our  own  flesh  and  blood;  it  is  flat  treason  to  them,  to 
ourselves,  and  to  our  ancestors.  Yet  for  seventy  years 
now  we  have  been  doing  this  as  fast  and  as  fully  as  we 
can,  with  the  consequence  that  in  many  centres  of  wealth 
and  population  the  machinery  of  government  from  top 
to  bottom  is  nearly  as  much  in  the  hands  of  foreigners, 
and   its   pay-rolls   as   practically   their    special    property, 


l66  NEW    YORK:  A   SY)\IPH0NIC  STUDY. 

as  though  they  had  come  here  with  fleets  and  armies  and 
taken  possession  of  us  by  force.  The  thanks  we  get  for 
thus  placing  them  in  control  of  our  Protestant  Institutions 
is  that  they  regard  a  Protestant  as  "some  awful  thing," 
and  that  their  street-boys  jeer  at  one  another  in  oppro- 
brium,— "O  you  Protestant!" 

For  our  own  sakes,  and  for  the  sake  of  our  children 
and  of  our  children's  children,  surely  this  should  stop. 
Hereditary  Americans  must  make  common  cause,  must 
"get  together"  in  the  sense  in  which  our  foreigners  have 
got  together  so  that  they  stand  now  on  our  soil  in  solid 
racial  and  religious  phalanxes  of  Irish,  of  Germans,  of 
Italians,  of  Jews,  of  Poles,  of  Slavs,  of  Orientals,  of 
Negroes, — ^yes,  in  "phalanxes"  of  nearly  every  alien 
tongue  and  race  and  creed  on  earth,  and  all  with  the 
same  object — to  milk  and  drain  this  passive  and  richly- 
giving  United  States  Cow,  and  then  to  ride  that  Cow ! 

But  these  foreigners,  multitudinous  though  they  be, 
are  racially  and  collectively  in  the  minority  in  this  land, 
and  the  privileges  and  perquisites  of  the  minority  only 
can  they  "justly"  expect.  Henceforth  the  American 
policy  must  be  that  of  all  other  nations,  and  even  as  Brit- 
ish offices  are  for  the  British,  German  offices  for  the 
German,  French  offices  for  the  French,  so  in  the  future 
American  offices  must  be  for  the  Americans  one  or  more 
of  whose  ancestors  voted  for  one  or  more  of  the  first 
nine  presidents,  and  for  such  only  of  the  foreign-born- 
and-fathered-and-grandfathered  as  sympathize  and  agree 
with  them. 

North  American  manhood  in  the  past  made  an  abysmal, 
— an  almost  suicidal  mistake.     It  was  so  anxious  to  be 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  167 

generous,  to  be  the  ^'brother"  of  all  mankind,  that  it 
has  not  been  true  to  itself,  true  to  its  own  children,  true 
to  its  own  fathers,  true  to  its  own  God.'  But  now  gen- 
erosity must  have  a  vacation,  and  "justice"  must  take  its 
place.  If  for  nothing  more  than  to  stop  the  ever-swelling 
stream  of  burglaries,  larcenies,  hold-ups,  fires,  murders 
and  worse  that  daily  distress  and  despoil  American  ex- 
istence, American  manhood  must  take  back  into  its  own 
hands  the  police  reins  it  so  long  ago  abandoned;  for  the 
Irish  manhood  entrusted  with  them  is  utterly  incompetent 
either  to  prevent  crime,  to  hunt  crime  down,  or  to  con- 
vict and  punish  crime  when  found. 

In  short,  if  life  in  the  United  States  is  to  continue 
worth  living,  things  have  got  to  be  readjusted.  If  He- 
reditary Americans  still  count  two-thirds  of  the  American 
people,  and  if  they  will  get  together  and  stand  together, 
the  game  is  still  in  their  own  hands.  By  the  "majority 
rule,"  which  is  the  quintessential  of  our  politics,  two- 
thirds  of  the  offices  should  easily  be  ours.  It  is  only  the 
outworn  Ward  and  District  systems, — only  the  represen- 
tation in  our  legislatures  and  town  councils  of  the  life- 
less land  instead  of  the  representation  of  the  living  souls 
upon  the  land, — which  is  keeping  our  American-descended 
citizens  out  of  their  own. 

Sweep  them  away! — these  political  survivals  from  a 
Homogenous  British  Past !  We  are  in  a  Heterogeneous 
American  Present,  and  our  voting  regulations  must  meet 
our  conditions,  or  the  Republic — this  most  Mighty,  most 
Magnanimous,  most  Beneficent  of  all  Free  Governments 
is  swamped! 


I68  NEW    YORK:   A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

The  Republic  is  ''up  against"  a  proposition  with  three 
faces,  but  a  single  soul : 

Is  she  Catholic  or  Protestant  f 

Is  she  South  European  or  North  American? 

Is  hers  a  "Bishop''  or  a  "Bible"  civilization  f 

If  Protestant  and  not  Catholic,  if  North  American  and 
not  South  European,  if  of  and  for  the  Bible  and  not  of 
and  for  the  Bishop,  then  let  every  Hereditary  American 
throughout  the  land, — man,  woman  and  child, — buckle  on 
the  armor  of  our  Protestant  History,  take  the  sword  of 
the  Divine  Word,  and  flinging  to  the  sky  the  snowy  ban- 
ner of  the  Divine  Spirit,  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  on 
behalf  of  American  Ideals  in  a  solidarity  more  adaman- 
tine than  is  the  foreign  solidarity  against  us,  and  then 
we  shall — we  must — 'Svin  out";  for  ours  is  not  only  the 
numerical  majority, — 

"We  have  the  Brains 
We  have  the  Strength 
We  have  the  Money  too!" 

Ascription. 

O  Trinity  Divine — Infinite — Eternal  in  the  Heavens! 
O  Source  and  Centre  and  Circumference  of  the  Uni- 
verse!— by  human  womanhood  thy  Ineffable  Names  of 
"Father,  Motlier  and  Holy  Son"  be  ever  exalted  and 
adored,  in  that  thy  Threefold  Love  did  guide  to  these 
North  American  shores  a  God-loving  and  Bible-believ- 
ing Manhood!  May  the  perfect  Wisdom,  the  perfect 
Justice,  the  ideal  Chivalry,  which  dwell  forever  in  the 
Councils  of   thy   Divine    Unity,   be  so    reflected   in    the 


NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  169 

councils  and  decisions  of  this  Chosen  Manhood  that,  first 
transforming  into  good  whatever  is  amiss  within  his  own 
boundaries,  he  may  thereafter  throughout  thy  World  he 
thy  Forerunner  and  Champion  for  Happiness  Every- 
where — until  Thy  Joyous  Triune  Kingdom  he  come  and 
thy  Blissful  Triune  Will  he  done  on  Earth  as  it  is  in 
Heaven. — A  men. 


THE  END. 


APPENDIX  A. 

THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN. 

By  Rudyard  Kipling. 

The  beginning  of  the  poem  of  seven  verses  and  its  end,  are 
as  follows: — 


Kipling. 


"Take  up  the  White  Man's  burden- 
Send  forth  the  best  ye  breed — 

Go,  bind  your  sons  to  exile 
To   serve  your  captives'   need; 

To  wait  in  heavy  harness, 
On   fluttered   folk  and  wild — 

Your  new-caught  sullen  peoples, 
Half  devil  and  half  child. 

"Take  up  the  White  Man's  burden- 
In  patience  to  abide, 

To  veil  the  threat  of  terror 
And  check  the  show  of  pride; 

By  all  ye  cry  or  whisper, 

By  all  ye  leave  or  do, 
The  silent,  sullen  peoples 

Shall  weigh  your  Gods  and  you. 

"Take  up  the  White  Man's  burden- 
Have  done  with  childish  days — 
The  lightly  proffered  laurel, 


V 

172  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

The  easy  ungrudged  praise; 
Comes  now,  to  search  your  manhood 

Through  all  the  thankless  years, 
Cold,  edged  with  dear-bought  wisdom, 

The  judgment  of  your  peers." 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN"  A^^SWERED* 

America. 

"You  call  me  to  my  duty. 

And  think  I  need  the  call. 
My  daughters  now  would  answer  you; 

Were  you  beneath  the  pall, 
Or  were  six  feet  of  earth 

Your  haughty  heart  upon, 
Your  brilliant  soul  should  hearken 

From  realms  beyond  the  sun.* 

"For,  if  we  'take  the  burden,* 

We'll  shoulder  it  in  full; 
Not  halve  it,  like  you  English, 

Who  play  with  an  edged  tool! 
My  Sons,  though  tense  and  mighty 

And  deadly  in  the  fray, 
Will  listen  to  their  Sisters, 

And  thus  their  Sisters  say: 

The  Sisters: 

"Brothers — if  ye  be  'White  Men- 
Lift  the  Dark  Woman  high, 

And  reverence  her  womanhood, 
Because  our  God  is  nigh; 

•  When,  in  1899,  the  writer's  indignation  moved  her  to  pen  this 
reply  to  Mr.  Kipling's  insolent  poem,  the  latter  was  lying  critically  ill 
in  a  New  York  hotel  a  few  blocks  away. 


NEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHOXIC  STUDY.  173 

And  teach  the  swarthy  fathers 

That  daughters  must  be  free, 
So  shall  the  dark  souls  gladden, 

Nor  longer  'sullen'  be. 

"Hail  the  deep  mother-pulses 

That  loathe  the  Rule  of  Force, 
But  since  they  must  be  mastered 

Prefer  their  own,  of  course! 
No  wonder  they  are  'sullen,' 

No  wonder  they  are  fain 
To  stab  the  English  'white'  men 

Who  fought  their  sons  for  gain. 

"Be  not  that  'White  Man' — traitor! 

The  Anglo-Indian  'fou,' 
Who  first  the  dark  girls  scorning, 

Scorns  next  his  consort,  too; 
Who  seeks  them  in  their  vileness, — 

Dark  women  and  their  lords. — 
And  shapes  his  ways  to  match  them 

And  sells  them  their  False  Gods!* 

"This  'White  Man'  back  in  England; 
'    'What?— Lady?— No,  not  I. 
A  Female, — that  is  all  I  want. 

No  'woman-mind'  to  spy! 
Dark  maidens  here  are  absent, 

But  white  ones  plenty  be. 
They  pleasure  me  in  music-halls, — 

In  homes  they  bend  the  knee. 

"Ah,  'stately  Homes  of  England,' 
Oft  based  on  woman's  shame! 

*  Many    of    the    idols    bought    and   worshipped    in    India    are   manu- 
factured in  Birmingham. 


174  ^^^   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY, 

Ah,  'Royal  Oak  of  England/ 

Rooted  so  near  hell-flame! 
That  flame  is  eating  higher, 

That  oak  is  sinking  down; 
Some  day  that  land  may  be,  like  Spain, 

But  ashes  'neath  a  crown ! 

"Brothers,--if  ye  be  'White  Men,'— 

Keep  the  White  Woman  high; 
She  is  your  very  soul  of  soul, 

She  gives  you  sigh  for  sigh. 
You  are  her  Aspiration, 

Let  her  be  yours  in  turn ; 
So  shall  the  Sun  of  Freedom 

For  both  forever  burn! 

"Fear  not  the  White  Man's  burden; 

Cheer  the  White  Woman  higher; 
And  see  each  generation 

Climb  still  beyond  its  sire. 
Enfold  her  to  your  bosom, 

Share  with  her  all  your  crown; 
For  ages  has  she  labored, — 

Then,  would  you  keep  her  down? 

"For  ages  she  has  labored. 

For  ages  has  she  loved. 
For  ages  has  she  waited, — 

How  far  from  you  removed! 
Now  hearken  to  her  counsel, 

Now  ponder  on  her  Fate; 
God  meant  her  for  your  helpmeet, — 

It  is  not  yet  too  late. 

"'What  is  the  White  Man's  "burden?"'— 
Faith  to  the  one  white  wife, 


AEIV    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  175 

No  matter  though  the  tempter 

Tempt  to  the  end  of  life. 
Bind  Monogamic  Law 

On  your  divided  soul 
Until  it  weld  to  unity, 

Steel-true  from  pole  to  pole. 

"Accept  this  'White  Man's  burden;' 

And  shackle  manhood  lust, — 
His  madness  for  the  visible 

Which  swiftly  falls  to  dust; 
Soar  to  the  Rejilm  of  Spirit, 

Take  Woman  with  you  there, — 
Back  where  her  Maker  placed  her 

Unutterably  fair. 

"Not  as  a  weary  'burden' 

Of  Wifehood  on  your  back — 
God  dowered  her  to  run,  to  fly 

On  in  her  own  bright  track; 
Share  all  your  problems  with  her, 

Your  puzzle  is  Herself 
Oh,  let  her  try  the  solving — 

Not  keep  her  on  the  shelf ! 

"Nor  as  a  dreary  'burden' 

Of  passive  Womankind — 
She  mothered  many  Arts, 

Can  you  ignore  her  mind? 
She  mastered  myriad  arts. 

Unresting  as  the  bee; 
Now  lend  her  as  her  payment 

Your  giant  Servants  Three!* 
•  Combined  Capital,  Organized  Labor,  Freedom  of  Action. 

"For  why  the  madding  'burden' 
Of  gaunt-eyed  Poverty 


176  NEW  YORK:  A  SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

You  took  on  with  the  Retail  Store 

To  clog  your  liberty? — 
Let  Wifehood  keep  the  store, 

And  keep  the  household,  too; 
And  rich  America  keep  free 

Between  her  oceans  blue! 

"Farewell  the  White  Man's  'burden/ 

Soon  as  the  dear  White  Wife, 
With  women-friends  unites  her  time 

Her  money,  thought,  and  life- 
Working  in  happy  bands     • 

From  morn  to  evening  dew, 
To  fashion  the  Home  Beautiful, 

And  make  it  fit  for  you! 

"Send  then  your  armies  forth, 

As  soldiers  of  the  Lord, 
With  consorts  skilled  and  wise 

To  teach  his  Living  Word; 
To  live  his  Law  of  Love 

In  sweetest  wedded  state, 
Until  the  swarthy  husbands 

That  sweetness  emulate. 

"Oh,  cease  to  monkey  England,— 

That  Hypocrite  of  lust. 
For  money  and  for  titles, 

With  woman  in  the  dust; 
And  for  our  purse-proud  daughters 

Who  play  in  England's  hands, 
Exile  the  poor  degenerates 

For  aye  to  alien  lands ! 

"Exile  their  fathers,  too, 
Deep  traitors  to  the  State, 


NEW    YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY,  177 

Who  leave  one  son  their  gold 

And  dare  discriminate 
Between  their  children  dear 

That  they  may  'found  a  line' 
And  build  an  aristocracy — 

Off  with  them  o'er  the  brine ! 

"Choose  for  that  White  Man's  banner 

Our  fathers  floated  high 
Either  more  'stars'  of  Freedom, 

Or  'stripes'  of  bloody  dye. 
Take  Washington  or  Kipling 

Your  leader  in  the  fight, 
The   Prince  of   Peace,   or   Prince  of   Wales,— 

They  can  not  both  be  right  !* 

"0  for  the  'white'  man's  glory! 

A  government  of  grace, 
When  Force  can  smiling  sleep. 

For  Love  is  in  his  place. 
O  for  surcease  from  scorning, 

From  fault  so  glad  to  find! 
O  for  George  Washington  again,— 

That  'white'  man  ever  kind ! 

"We   Sisters   crave  your   Glory, 

A  Brotherhood  of  Strength, 
Founded  upon  the  Justice 

That  must  be  yours  at  length; 
Based  on  our  Maker's  Truth, 

Burned  on  your  deepest  heart: — 


•  When  these  verses  were  written  Queen  Victoria  was  still  living 
and  her  eldest  son  still  that  Prince  of  Wales  who  for  so  long  was  the 
glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  morals  both  for  the  British  aristocrncy 
and  for  our  American  toadying  ditto. 


178  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 


Honor  is  Woman's  Breath  of  Life; 
White  Men  must  take  her  part. 

*'The  White  Man  must  protect — 

Nay — reach  her  toward  the  sky, 
Must  ring  out — 'Perish  everything 

Before  her  Sanctity!' 
So  shall  Dark  Mothers  gladden, 

Till  snowy  babes  be  born ; 
And  so  the  God-Head  triumph, 

And  Hell,  persuaded,  turnl" 


APPENDIX  B. 

The  following  are  replies  to  the  author's  inquiries  of 
an  American  statesman  and  of  two  American  historians 
as  to  the  truth  of  the  Irish  bodkin's  accusation  against 
Washington  in  1884.  The  statesman  was  the  late  Senator 
Bayard  of  Delaware,  so  long  her  distinguished  leader 
in  Congress;  one  of  the  historians  was  that  standard 
biographer  of  Revolutionary  statesmen,  Mr.  John  T. 
Morse  of  Boston;  the  other  the  famous  John  Fiske  of 
Cambridge,  since  deceased. 

Wilmington,  Del. 

August  22,  1884. 
Madam  : 

Upon  my  return  home  I  found  your  letter  of  the  10th 
and  mailed  to  you  the  speech  made  by  me  in  Chicago  as 
you  desired. 

Your  letter  refers  in  distress  to  a  recent  newspaper  al- 
legation against  the  private  character  of  General  Washing- 
ton. In  response  to  your  regard  for  Washington  I  am  glad 
to  write  to  you  of  him. 

Undoubtedly  such  charges  were  current  in  certain  circles 
in  his  day.  But  I  have  now  before  me  his  own  comments 
which  he  intended  to  embody  in  his  Farewell  Address,  but 
was  induced  afterward  to  omit. 

He  refers  to  "the  malicious  falsehoods  and  "virulent 
abuse,"  wounding  to  his  "reputation  and  feelings"  with  which 
the  press  had  "teemed."  But  he  concluded  "as  heretofore, 
to  pass  them  over  in  silence" — "never  having  myself  nor  by 
any  other  with  my  participation  or  knowledge,  written  or 
published  a  scrap  in  answer  to  any  of  them." 

In  my  years  of  public  service  I  have  met  a  class  of  men 


NEW   YORK:  A    SYMPHONIC  STUDY.  l8l 

who   sought   to   degrade   the    reputation    of    Washington    in 
order  to  bring  him  down  to  the  standard  of  their  own  level. 

Such  persons  have  repeated  in  my  hearing  instances  of 
grossness  and  vulgarity  on  the  part  of  Washington.  Indig- 
nant, disgusted  and  incredulous  I  have  hunted  down  these 
alleged  "facts"  and  never  found  one  to  be  true.  I  also 
remember  a  careful  and  thorough  student  of  the  history  of 
Washington  saying  to  me  in  reference  to  this  very  class  of 
scandals,  that  "the  more  he  read  and  discovered  of  Wash- 
ington the  whiter  grew  his  name." 

Therefore,  Madam,  I  congratulate  you  and  our  country 
that  Washington  stands  in  his  own  niche  of  fame  beyond  the 
flight  of  the  arrows  of  scandalous  assault,  which  will  always 
either  fall  short,  or  shatter  themselves  against  the  adamant 
of  truth. 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

T.  F.  Bayard. 

Mrs.  Melusina  F.  Peirce, 
New  York  City. 

Beverly  Farms,  Mass. 

August  20,  1884. 
My  dear  Madam  : 

My  reply  to  your  letter  of  the  10th  inst.,  which  has  only 
just  found  me,  is—that  there  have  been  rumors,  all  very 
vague  and  general,  concerning  Washington.*  I  never  heard 
but  one  story  which  could  be  called  in  the  least  degree 
specific.  Evidence  of  any  of  these  scandalous  gossipings  I 
believe  there  is  absolutely  none.  I  have  never  come  across 
any  and  I  have  asked  three  of  my  acquaintances  as  likely 
as  any  I  know  of  in  the  country  to  be  informed  on  such  a 
point,  and  they  have  only  been  able  to  say:  "There  were 
stories."  In  a  word,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief, 
it  can  only  be  said  that  Washington,  like  other  people,  has 
been  "talked  about."  But  unlike  the  other  men  mentioned 
by   the   Nation,   nothing  has   been   established   against   him. 


i82  NEW   YORK:  A   SYMPHONIC  STUDY. 

nothimg  is  known;  he  is  entitled  to  all  the  benefit  of  *he  doubt, 
at  least. 

I  confess  that  I  was  astonished  and  annoyed  at  the  bold 
assertion  of  the  Nation — one  that  such  a  newspaper  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  put  forth  unless  it  could  be  sustained. 
Nevertheless,  in  my  present  state  of  information,  I  do  not 
believe  that  it  can  be  sustained. 

I  wish  I  could  give  you  a  more  conclusive  reply;  but, 
as  has  been  often  said,  in  such  matters  a  negative  can  never 
be  proved. 

Very  truly  yours, 

John  T.  Morse,  Jr. 
Mrs.  Melusina  Fay  Peirce, 
New  York. 

22  Berkeley  St.,,  Cambridge,  Mass. 

December  6,  1894. 

My  dear  Mrs.  Peirce: 

With  regard  to  the  remarks  to  which  you  refer,  casting 
aspersions  upon  the  moral  character  of  George  Washington, 
I  may  say  that  I  have  never  discovered  any  basis  for  them. 
For  many  years,  I  have  been  accustomed  to  hear  persons  hall 
jocosely  speak  of  Washington  as  if  he  were  not  entirely 
above  reproach,  but  I  have  never  found  any  one  who  could 
point  to  any  evidence  for  such  a  belief.  The  subject  has 
so  far  interested  me  that  I  have  made  many  inquiries  with 
regard  to  it,  but  I  have  never  found,  anything,  and  my  own 
belief  is  that  his  character  was  absolutely  spotless.  I  suspect 
many  people  get  tired  of  hearing  Aristides  called  the  Just, 
and  in  their  desire  to  pick  flaws  the  wish  becomes  father  to 
the  thought. 
Believe  me, 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

John  Fiske. 


